POPULAR NATURAL HISTORY

FOR BOYS AND GIRLS

 

CEA Pl Resi

MAMMALS

THERE are over two million species of animals on
this earth, and if we were merely to print their names,
we should have to mass eight thousand of them on
every page of this book. The numbers are, in fact,
so appalling and incomprehensible that it is simply
beyond human powers to realise the immensity and
variety of the mighty Creation amid which we live.
The wonderful is not necessarily the unknown ; in>
the known we have the wonderful with us.

The Creation has a long history, lost in the depths
of ages marked by constant change and continuous
life. The millions of forms that we know to-day are
but as nothing in comparison with those which have
vanished for ever in the onward march. Onward
unrestingly has come the great army of the living,
each form rising to suit its environment, and
failing as its environment was modified; Nature