Chapter IX: To the Teacher

Make this chapter, as far as you can, the one in the volume for
most intensive study. Show the pupils how the study of animal
life is connected with geology, tell them of the record of life
in the fossils of the rocks, the kinds of strange beasts that
once inhabited the earth. Show them again how the study of
animals in their anatomy is not the study of one--say of man,
but how man and all the mammals, the reptiles, the birds, the
fishes, the insects, on and on back to the single-celled
amœba, are all related to each other, all links in one long
wonder chain of life.

FOR THE PUPIL

PAGE 94

_Charles Lamb:_ Look up his life in the Encyclopedia. Read for
yourselves his essay on Roast Pig.

_modus edibilis_: the Latin for “manner of eating.”

PAGE 95

_the ’possum’s relations:_ They are the marsupials, the pouched
animals, like the kangaroo.

PAGE 98

_reptilian age_: one of the great geological ages or eras, known
to the geologists as the great mesozoic or “middle” epoch, when
reptiles ruled the land and sea.

PAGE 103

_smiles at you--grins:_ Read the account of this habit in the
opening chapter of the author’s “Wild Life Near Home.”