PREFACE

BIOLOGY is the science which treats of all living organisms, from Man to the lowest plant. No natural science is at present more keenly pursued or with more effect. The advances of Astronomy and Geology have produced great changes in men's minds during the last three centuries: Biology is producing changes at least as great, in the present age. So rapid has been its progress that the Natural History of Animals and Plants needs to be rewritten the field of Nature being surveyed from a new stand-point. Such a history may be written in two ways: (1) Living beings may be treated as one whole, their various powers and the more general facts as to their organization being successively portrayed as they exist in the whole series; or (2) one animal (or plant) may be selected as a type and treated of in detail, other types, successively more divergent in structure from the first, being described afterwards.

In following the latter mode, we may either begin with one of the most simply organised of living creatures and gradually ascend to the highest and most complex in structure; or we may commence with the latter, and thence descend to the consideration of the lowest kinds of animated beings.

Historically, it is the latter course which has been

followed. The bodily structure most interesting to man, his own, was the first studied (directly or indirectly), and the names now given to different parts of the bodies of the lower animals have been mainly derived from human anatomy. The descending course is also that which seems, on the whole, preferable, for thus, by commencing with the class of animals to which man belongs, we may proceed from the more or less known to the unknown, and from that which is comparatively familiar, to that which is strange and novel.

Having then chosen to begin the study of Animals and Plants with that class to which we belong, it might perhaps be expected that Man himself would be chosen as the type. But a fresh description of human anatomy is not required, and would be comparatively useless to those for whom this work is especially intended. For a satisfactory study of animals (or of plants) can only be carried on by their direct examination-the knowledge to be obtained from reading being supplemented by dissection. This, however, as regards man, can only be practised in medical schools. Moreover, the human body is so large that its dissection is very laborious, and it is a task generally at first unpleasing to those who have no special reason for undertaking it. But this work is intended for persons who are interested in zoology, and especially in the zoology of beasts, birds, reptiles, and fishes, and not merely for those concerned in studies proper to the medical profession.

The problem then has been to select as a type for examination and comparison, an animal easily obtained and of convenient size; one belonging to man's class and one not so different from him in structure but that comparisons between it and him (as to limbs and other larger portions of its frame) may readily suggest themselves to the

student. Such an animal is the common Cat. In it we have a convenient and readily accessible object for reference, while the advantages which would result from the selection of Man as a type will almost all be obtained without the disadvantages of that selection. The study of the zoology of the Cat, as here treated, will also give the earnest student of Biology the knowledge of anatomy, physiology, and kindred sciences, which is necessary to enable him to study profitably the whole class of animals to which it belongs and to which we belong-the class of Mammals. The natural history of that entire class will be treated of in a companion volume, to which the present work may serve as an introduction-all the needful anatomical terms and relations (as they exist in the selected type) being here once for all explained. The present volume is expressly intended to be an introduction to the natural history of the whole group of back-boned animals (since they are all formed according to one fundamental plan); but the subject has been so treated as to fit it also to serve as an introduction to Zoology generally, and even to Biology itself the main relations borne by cats, not only to the leading groups of animals, but also to plants, being here pointed out. The sciences subordinate to Biology are also enumerated and defined.

It has been thought better not to separate the study of physiology from that of anatomy, and, accordingly, an explanation of the functions performed by each different system of parts of which the body is made up, will be found to follow the account of their structure.

I am indebted to my friend Professor Flower for the use of his valuable illustrations of the skulls of the Carnivora, as also to the Zoological Society, from whose Proceedings they are, with some other illustrations, extracted. desire also to express my thanks to Professor Allen

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Thomson, M.D., F.R.S., and to Messrs. Longmans & Co., Messrs. Cassell & Co., and Messrs. Kegan Paul & Co., for the use of various electros.

Dr. Murie, F.L.S., has had charge of many of the woodcuts, certain of which-representing ligaments, viscera, and salivary glands-have been drawn from his dissections and under his supervision.

I have to thank Mr. Alban Doran, who has made careful dissections of the internal ear and portions of the generative organs, and also Mr. P. Percival Whitcomb and my son Mr. Frederick St. G. Mivart, for more or less assistance. To Professor Cope I am much indebted for very kindly sending me proofs of unpublished plates of American fossils described and named by him.

I have also to express my obligation to Mr. Wm. Pearson (of the College of Surgeons) for making some excellent dissections, from which certain of the illustrations are taken. Original drawings have also been made from specimens preserved in the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons and in the British Museum. The drawings have (with the exception of six figures of fossil remains) been executed by Mr. C. Berjeau and engraved by Mr. Ferrier. I feel bound to express my sense of the skill evinced in their execution.