Reports Of Explorations And Surveys To Ascertain The Most Practicable And Economical Route For A Railroad From The Mississippi River To The Pacific O

Author : United States War Dept
Publisher : Rarebooksclub.com
ISBN 13 : 9781230078441
Total Pages : 366 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (784 download)

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Download or read book Reports of Explorations and Surveys; to Ascertain the Most Practicable and Economical Route for a Railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific O written by United States War Dept and published by Rarebooksclub.com. This book was released on 2013-09 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1857 edition. Excerpt: ...the species of Geomys and Thomomys have always been very great, owing to various causes. In the first place, there is the same trouble in procuring specimens of this as of all other subterranean animals, as they rarely see the light, and sometimes are never observed even by persons who have lived for years in districts quite densely inhabited by them. They vary, too, with age and season to a considerable extent, so that in the small number of specimens seen by naturalists, at least of the far western species, each one has almost Berved as the type of a distinct species. There is a very strong resemblance among all the members of the genus, and owing to their peculiar conformation, the points of structure affording good distinctive features are easily distorted or obscured. The best characters are, perhaps, to be derived from the fore feet or hand; the size and shape of the claws, and their proportion to the whole hand; the length of the digits and palm, and the position and extension of the thumb; but many of these points cannot be taken into consideration unless the hand is perfectly straight and bent at a considerable angle to the fore arm, which is seldom if ever the case, unless specially attended to in drying, owing to the contraction and flexure of the joints. The tail is apt to vary greatly in measuring different skins of the same species, owing to the fact that the skin and flesh of the body encircles it to a considerable distance beyond its base, the tail itself appearing to spring from the extremity of a cone. In preparing the specimens, if the entire vertebrae are left in, the skin thus encircling the basal portion of the tail may, in drying, enclose the vertebra firmly and closely, and thus the entire length be indicated. As...