Eccentricities of the Animal Creation

CURIOUS creatures of Animal Life have been objects of interest to mankind in all ages and countries; the universality of which may be traced to that feeling which "makes the whole world kin." It has been remarked with emphatic truth by a popular writer, that "we have in the Bible and in the engraven and pictorial records the earliest evidence of the attention paid to Natural History in general. The 'navy of Tarshish' contributed to the wisdom of him who not only 'spake of the trees from the cedar of Lebanon, even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall,' but 'also of beasts, and of fowls, and of creeping things, and of fishes,' [1] to say nothing of numerous other passages showing the progress that zoological knowledge had already made. The Egyptian records bear testimony to a familiarity not only with the forms of a multitude of wild animals, but with their habits and geographical distribution." The following Book are some of the more remarkable animals which the Society have possessed..