{Lines from Second Edition only.} [The publication of a second and revised edition of this Part affords the author an opportunity of expressing his sense of the general kindliness of his reviewers, and the help they have him in improving this maiden effort. To no one is there vouchsafed such a facility in the discovery of errors in a book as to its author, so soon as it has passed beyond his power of correction. Hence the general tone of encouragement (and in some cases the decided approval) of the members of this termination to a period of considerable remorse and apprehension.] I have been able through their counsel, and the experience I have had while using this book in teaching, to correct several printer's errors and to alter various ambiguous or misleading expressions, as well as to bring the book up to date again in one or two particulars. My thanks are particularly due to my friend Miss Robbins, who has very kindly redrawn the occasionally rather blottesque figures of the first edition. Not only have these plates gained immensely in grace and accuracy, but the lettering is now distinct-- an improvement that any student who has had to hunt my reference letters in the first edition will at once appreciate. H. G. Wells November, 1892. {First Edition.} December, 1893. {Second Edition.} -The Rabbit._ 1. _External Form and General Considerations._ Section 1. It is unnecessary to enter upon a description of the appearance of this familiar type, but it is not perhaps superfluous, as we proceed to consider its anatomy, to call attention to one or two points in its external, or externally apparent structure. Most of our readers know that it belongs to that one of two primary animal divisions which is called the vertebrata, and that the distinctive feature which place it in this division is the possession of a spinal column or backbone, really a series of small ring-like bones, the vertebrae (Figure 1 v.b.) strung together, as it were, on the main nerve axis, the spinal cord (Figure 1 s.c.). This spinal column can be felt along the neck and back to the tail. This tail is small, tilted up, and conspicuously white beneath, and it serves as a "recognition mark" to guide the young when, during feeding, an alarm is given and a bolt is made for the burrows. In those more primitive (older and simpler-fashioned) vertebrata, the fishes, the tail is much large and far more important, as compared with the rest of the body, than it is in most of the air-inhabiting vertebrates. In the former it is invariably a great muscular mass to propel the body forward; in the latter it may disappear, as in the frog, be simply a feather-bearing stump, as in the pigeon, a fly flicker, as in the cow or horse, a fur cape in squirrel, or be otherwise reduced and modified to meet special requirements.