An Introduction to the Study of Mammals Living and Extinct

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A. and C. Black, 1891 - 763 pages

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Page 508 - ... is extremely grand and peculiarly striking. It consists at times of a low, deep moaning, repeated five or six times, ending in faintly audible sighs ; at other times he startles the forest with loud, deeptoned, solemn roars, repeated five or six times in quick succession, each increasing in loudness to the third or fourth, when his voice dies away in five or six low, muffled sounds, very much resembling distant thunder.
Page 508 - Scottish stags at the rutting season, they roar loudest in cold, frosty nights ; but on no occasions are their voices to be heard in such perfection, or so intensely powerful, as when two or three strange troops of lions approach a fountain to drink at the same time. When this occurs, every member of each troop sounds a bold roar of defiance at the opposite parties ; and when one roars, all roar together, and each seems to vie with his comrade in the intensity and power of his voice.
Page 82 - pro-mammalian " group, and not by any of the known forms of Sauropsida ; and there is other evidence which tends in the same direction. Thus, the Amphibia are the only air-breathing Vertebrata, which, like Mammals, have a dicondylian skull. It is only in them that the articular element of the mandibular arch remains cartilaginous ; while the quadrate ossification is small, and the squamosal extends down over it to the osseous elements of the mandible ; thus affording an easy transition to the mammalian...
Page 235 - The function of the whalebone is to strain the water from the small marine mollusks, crustaceans, or fish upon which the whales subsist. In feeding they fill the immense mouth with water containing shoals of these small creatures, and then, on their closing the jaws and raising the tongue, so as to diminish the cavity of the mouth, the water streams out through the narrow intervals between the hairy fringe of the whalebone blades, and escapes through the lips, leaving the living prey to be swallowed.
Page 750 - Eskimo, who appear to be a branch of the typical North Asiatic Mongols, who in their wanderings northwards and eastwards across the American continent, isolated almost as perfectly as an island population would be, hemmed in on one side by the eternal Polar ice and on the other by hostile tribes of American Indians, with which they rarely, if ever, mingled, have gradually developed characters most of which are stronglyexpressed modifications of those seen in their allies who still remain on the western...
Page 744 - ... can ever, be obtained. There is not one of the most characteristic, most extreme forms, like those I have just named, from which transitions cannot be traced by almost imperceptible gradations to any of the other equally characteristic, equally extreme, forms. Indeed, a large proportion of mankind is made up, not of extreme or typical, but of more or less generalised or intermediate, forms, the relative numbers of which are continually increasing, as the long-existing isolation of nations and...
Page 753 - They comprise the great majority of the inhabitants of Southern Europe, Northern Africa, and South-west Asia, and consist mainly of the Aryan, Semitic, and Hamitic families. The Dravidians of India, the Veddahs of Ceylon, and probably the Ainos of Japan, and the Maoutze of China, also belong to this race, which may have contributed something to the mixed character of some tribes of Indo-China and the Polynesian Islands, and, as before said, given at least the characters of the hair to the otherwise...
Page 302 - ... these sheep of Peru are large enough to serve as beasts of burden. They can carry about one hundred pounds or more, and the Spaniards used to ride them, and they would go four or five leagues a day.
Page 83 - Amphibians, that there can be no hesitation in regarding the one as the direct descendant of the other; and we may probably regard the Mammalia as having originated from the same ancestral stock at the time the Amphibian type was passing into the Reptilian. From this point of view, some of the mammalian features found in the more specialized Anomodonts may probably be regarded as having been acquired during a parallel line of development.
Page 748 - ... as they were intensely, even exaggeratedly, Negroid in the form of nose, projection of mouth, and size of teeth, typically so in character of hair, and aberrant chiefly in width of skull in the parietal region. A Cross with any of the Polynesian or Malay races sufficiently strong to produce this would, in all probability, have also left some traces on other parts of their organisation. On the other hand, in many parts of the Melanesian region there are distinct evidences of large admixture with...

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