PREFACE. The primary object of the present work, is to give as correct and comprehensive a view of the animals composing the Ox Tribe, as the present state of our knowledge will admit, accompanied by authentic figures of all the known species and the more remarkable varieties. Although this genus (comprising all those Ruminants called Buffaloes, Bisons, and Oxen generally,) is as distinct and well characterised as any other genus in the animal... more...

DETERMINING THE AGE OF CATTLE BY THE TEETH. The age of cattle can be approximated closely by the appearance, development, and subsequent wear of their second incisor teeth. Cattle have eight incisor teeth, all in the lower jaw. In the calf at birth two or more of the temporary or first incisor teeth are present. With the first month the entire eight incisors have appeared. Fig. 1.—Internal face of incisors of the calf. As the animal... more...

INTRODUCTION One of the effects of the modern advance in natural science has been greatly to increase the attention which is devoted to the influences that the conditions of diverse peoples have had upon their development. Man is no longer looked upon, as he was of old, as a being which had been imposed upon the earth in a sudden and arbitrary manner, set to rule the world into which he had been sent as a master. We now see him as one of the... more...

PAL In the depths of the green wilderness, where dark spruce and hemlock guard the secrets of the trail, are still to be found wild creatures who know little of man and who regard him with more of curiosity than of fear. Woodland ponds, whose placid waters have never reflected the dark lines of a canoe, lie like jewels in their setting of green hills; ponds where soft-eyed deer come down to drink at twilight, and where the weird laughter of... more...

INTRODUCTION Some thirty years ago, while out on one of his landlooking trips in the woods of Northern Michigan, my father came upon a little lake which seemed to him the loveliest that he had ever seen, though he had visited many in the course of his explorations. The wild ponds are very apt to be shallow and muddy, with low, marshy shores; but this one was deep and clear, and its high banks were clothed with a splendid growth of beech, maple... more...

PART I.  HOW TO CLEAR RATS FROM WAREHOUSES, OFFICES, STOREROOMS, ETC. In the first place my advice is—never poison Rats in any enclosed buildings whatever.  Why?  Simply because the Rats that you poison are Drain Rats, or what you call Black Rats, and you can depend upon it that the Rats that you poison will not get back into the drains, but die under the floor between the laths and plaster, and the consequence is that in a... more...

CHAPTER 1. SUPPLY AND DEMAND. For years there has been a belief that the supply of fur-bearing animals would soon be inadequate to the demand. This belief is well founded and is apparent when the fact is known that the natural haunts and homes of the fur-producing animals are becoming less each year. The draining of swamps and marshes is destroying the homes and breeding places of muskrat and to a certain extent coon and mink. The saw mill and... more...

MAN. In this collection, like Linnæus, we begin with man as undoubtedly an animal, as opposed to a vegetable or mineral. Like Professor Owen, we are inclined to fancy he is well entitled to separate rank from even the Linnæan order, Primates, and to have more systematic honour conferred on him than what Cuvier allowed him. That great French naturalist placed man in a section separate from his four-handed order, Quadrumana, and, from... more...

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Last Bull That was what two grim old sachems of the Dacotahs had dubbed him; and though his official title, on the lists of the Zoölogical Park, was “Kaiser,” the new and more significant name had promptly supplanted it. The Park authorities—people of imagination and of sentiment, as must all be who would deal successfully with wild animals—had felt at once that the name aptly embodied the tragedies and the romantic... more...