HALF HOURS WITH THE LOWER ANIMALS PROTOZOANS, SPONGES, CORALS, SHELLS INSECTS, AND CRUSTACEANS BY CHARLES FREDERICK HOLDER AUTHOR OF "ELEMENTS OF ZOÖLOGY," "STORIES OF ANIMAL LIFE," "LIFE OF LOUIS AGASSIZ," ETC. [Illustration] NEW YORK ᠅ CINCINNATI ᠅ CHICAGO AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1905, BY CHARLES F. HOLDER. ENTERED AT STATIONERS' HALL, LONDON. LOWER ANIMALS. W. P. 2 PREFACE At the present day education is not complete without definite courses of nature study. We are living in an age of strenuous business life and activity, where the best equipped students along the various lines secure the best positions. Time was when zoölogy, botany, and kindred nature studies were classed with music and the so-called dead languages, and were taken up as incidentals or were employed in "mind training"; but to-day there are a thousand branches of trade and commerce which require knowledge that can be obtained only through nature study. It is not necessary that the student, unless he intends to be a teacher of science or a professional naturalist, should be able to pass examinations in the abstruse classification of animals or delve into difficult anatomical studies. What the average student needs is a broad and general idea of animal life, its great divisions, and notably the relationship of the lower animals to man in an economic sense, the geographical distribution of animals, etc. It is vastly more important for the coming lumber merchant to know the relationship which forests bear to the water supply, and to have a general idea of forestry and the trees which make forests, than to be able to recite a long formula of classification or analysis, of value only to the advanced student or specialist. The future merchant who is to deal in alpaca, leather, dye, skins, hair, bone products, shell, pearl, lac, animal food products, ivory, whalebone, guano, feathers, and countless other articles derived from animals is but poorly equipped for the struggle for business supremacy if he is not prepared by nature study, nature readings, and other practical instruction along these lines. It is believed to-day by those who have given the subject the closest attention that the initial move of the teacher should be to call the attention of the child to the beauties of nature, the works of the Infinite, and thus early inculcate a habit of observation. The toys of the kindergarten should be fruits, flowers, shrubs, trees, pebbles, and vistas of mountains, hills, lakes, and streams, and nature study in some form should be continuous in school life.