Artistic anatomy of animals / Édouard Cuyer ; translated & edited by George Haywood.

  • Cuyer, Édouard, 1852-
Date:
1905
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Artistic anatomy of animals / Édouard Cuyer ; translated & edited by George Haywood. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    27/346 (page 3)
    INTRODUCTION belong to the fishes, and the latter to birds. Yet, on study- ing their structure, we find that, not only do these animals merit a place in the class which they occupy, because they possess the distinctive characters of mammals ; but, still further, their internal structure is analogous to that of man and of the other individuals of this class. Notwithstanding this similarity of structure, the whale is not without some points of difference from its neighbours the horse and the dog ; therefore, in order to place each of these animals in a position suitable to it, mammals are divided into secondary groups called orders. The first of these orders includes, under the name primates, man and apes. The latter contain animals which approach birds in certain characters of their organism, forming a link between the latter and mammals. We find, in studying the regions of the body in some of the vertebrates, that, while they present differences from the corresponding regions of the human body, they also offer most striking analogies. We can, for example, recognise the upper limb of man in the anterior one of quadrupeds, in the wing of the bat, in the paddle of the seal, etc. It is, so to speak, those variations of a great plan which give such a charm to the study of comparative anatomy. The division of classes into orders, which we have just mentioned, being still too general, it was found necessary to establish subdivisions—more and more specialized—to which the names families, genera, species, and varieties were given. i—2