Winners in life's race Volume 1; or, The great backboned family
Arabella Burton Buckley
Paperback
(RareBooksClub.com, May 18, 2012)
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1888 Excerpt: ...so long ago that we can tell but little of their daily lives, but it is clear that they played a very different part from our small frogs and newts of to-day, and in their well-formed limbs were worthy forerunners of land and air-breathing animals. But like the old race of fishes these large amphibians were only to have their day, for as other branches of the family tree grew up, and reptiles grew strong and mighty, and other true land animals began to flourish, these huge plated forms dwindled away, and we lose sight of them; and when we find any of their relations again it is only as our present frogs and newts, salamanders and ccecilians, which have taken up their refuge in lakes, ponds, ditches, underground waters, or damp mud. And, curiously enough, those forms of to-day which are most like the huge Labyrinthodonts as they are called, of the old coal-forests, are the feeble cascilians, with their horny scales and their numerous ribs, although they have now fallen the lowest of all amphibians, and, with their sightless eyes and ringed and legless bodies, have taken to burrowing in the ground like worms. Not so the frogs, which, like the bony fishes, began their career in later times, and have known how to fit themselves into many nooks and corners in life. In almost all countries of the globe they hop merrily about the ponds and ditches, never wandering far from the water, into which they jump and dive whenever danger threatens. It is true they are eaten by thousands, both as tadpoles and frogs, by birds, snakes, water-rats, and fish, and even by each other, but they multiply fast enough to keep up the supply, and find plenty of insects both in and out of the ponds. Nor have they kept entirely to a watery life, for their near relations, the toads, which...