Mammals Of Butler County Pa

Author : Samuel N. Rhoads
Publisher : Forgotten Books
ISBN 13 : 9781332058617
Total Pages : 296 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (586 download)

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Download or read book The Mammals of Pennsylvania and New Jersey written by Samuel N. Rhoads and published by Forgotten Books. This book was released on 2015-07-28 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from The Mammals of Pennsylvania and New Jersey: A Biographic, Historic and Descriptive Account of the Furred Animals of Land and Sea, Both Living and Extent, Known to Have Existed in These States; Designed as Both a Popular and Scientific Presentation of a Branch of Nature-Study Hitherto Unduly Neglect Job, the ancient divine and naturalist, asks, "Who teacheth us more than the beasts of the earth or maketh us wiser than the fowls of heaven?" Owing to the difficulty of making acquaintance with those "beasts of the earth" which we call Mammals, because of their nocturnal, subterranean or aquatic habits, the study of mammalogy has never been as popular as that of the "fowls of heaven." It is, however, no less an interesting and profitable study and even yet furnishes the investigator, in spite of the great activity of the past decade in that branch, a far richer field for original zoological study than does ornithology. To man, himself a mammal, the importance of this study, especially as regards his physical, mental and spiritual relationships to the beasts of the earth, cannot, perhaps, be overestimated. One of the most noticeable developments in biological research at the present day is along the line of geographic distribution. It has resulted in the solution of many vexed problems which the last century biologist vainly pondered. In the prosecution of this line of research much is discovered of an incidental character relating to the life-history of created things which has hitherto been hidden away. These are some of the facts which induced me, eleven years ago, to begin the work which forms the subject of this paper. In these studies I have been aided to a limited extent by the all-too-meagre and often misleading faunal publications of previous authors. More substantial and valuable aid has been received by means of voluminous correspondence and personal interviews with naturalists, trappers, hunters, old pioneers and frontiersmen living in the regions named. The main source of information, however, has been personal field experience in nearly every county in the two states. The collections of Pennsylvania and New Jersey mammals, resulting from this work, and numbering about 2,000 specimens, have recently been acquired by the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. For the use of the unrivalled literary and museum facilities of this institution and the continued courtesy of its officers I am glad to have this opportunity to express my thankfulness. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.