A Book of Natural History

Huxley, Darwin, Wallace, Burroughs and Maeterlinck, writing for young readers — thirty-odd essays by the great naturalists on everything from the man-like apes to what worms do.

Table of Contents

Introduction

The HON. JOHN D. LONG, Secretary of the United States Navy, Boston.

The Condor

3 pages

Animals, Birds, and Fishes

THIS volume is made up from the writings of naturalists who have told us of the behavior of animals as they have seen it at first hand and…

The Wonder of Life

VERY one has seen a cornfield. If you pluck up one of the innumerable wheat plants which are fixed in the soil of the field, about harvest…

Life Growth; Frogs

(FROM A SONG OF LIFE.) BY MARGARET WARNER MORLEY.1 S OMEWHAT higher than the fish in the scale of life is the A 1frog. though he begins…

The Man-Like Apes

14 pages

Some Strange Nurseries

6 pages

How Animals Spend the Winter

3 pages

Birds' Nests

3 pages

Birds in Their Relation to Agriculture

11 pages

The Scissor Beak

S T has short legs, web feet, extremely long-pointed wings, and is about the size of a tern. The beak is flattened laterally, that is, in a…

The Umbrella Bird

T HIS singular bird is about the size of a raven, and is of a similar color, but its feathers have a more scaly appearance, from being…

Humming Birds

S OON after crossing the muddy Artigua below Pavon, a beautifully clear and sparkling brook is reached, coming down to join its pure waters…

The Foundations of a Wonderful City

3 pages

Wasps

I ONE day saw a small black and yellow banded wasp hunting for spiders; it approached a web where a spider was stationed in the centre…

A Wasp and Its Prey

A M OST graceful and attractive of all as the wasps Fabre describes them, the Ammophiles, of all the inhabitants of the garden, hold the…

Leaf-Cutting Ants

N EARLY all travellers in tropical America have described the ravages of the leafcutting ants (Ecodoma); their crowded, well-worn paths…

Some Wonderful Spiders

T HE number of spiders, in proportion to other insects, is here compared with England very much larger; perhaps more so than with any other…

What I Saw in an Ant's Nest

7 pages

The Wild Llama

T HE guanaco, or wild llama, is the characteristic quadruped of the plains of Patagonia; it is the South American representative of the…

Bats

4 pages

How Snakes Eat

2 pages

What Worms Do

4 pages

Two Fops Among the Fishes

2 pages

Sea Slugs and Cuttle-Fish

WAS much interested, on several occasions, by watching the habits of an Octopus, or cuttle-fish. Although common in the pools of water left…

The Cow Fish

T was a female, about six feet long, and nearly five in circumference in the thickest part.

Old Rattler and the King Snake

2 pages

The Story of a Strange Land

4 pages

The Color of Animals

9 pages

Protective Resemblances in Spiders

11 pages

The Bath of the Birds

3 pages

The Loon

T is remarkable how many creatures live wild and free, though secret, in the woods, and still sustain themselves in the neighborhood of…

The Dartmoor Ponies

10 pages

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