Without going too far back into history, let us look towards the end of the last century and the beginning of this. Cuvier, Lamarck,[2] and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire,[3] all preoccupied with general ideas, were each trying to build up a doctrine. The theory of evolution was born beneath the pen of Lamarck, but immediately fell under the attacks of Cuvier.[4] It is to Darwin that the honour belongs of having rescued it from oblivion and of having initiated the movement which to-day rules the natural sciences. Studies in embryology and anatomy are rising without number beneath this impulse; and perhaps it may be said that these new sciences, so fruitful in results, absorb a little too much attention and leave in the shade subjects longer known, but which, however, gain new interest by the way they fit into present scientific theories. [2] _Philosophie zoologique_, 2e edition, Paris, 1830; _Histoire des Animaux sans Vertebres_, Introduction, 1835. [3] _Philosophie anatomique_, 1818; _Zoologie generale_, 1841. [4] _Le Regne Animal_, 1829; _Lecons d'Anatomie comparee_, 2e edition, 1835-46. I wish to speak of the manners of animals; the facts regarding them are of sufficient interest if we consider them one by one, and they become much more interesting when we attempt to show the close way in which they are bound together. Volumes would not suffice to exhaust the subject; but if the entire task is too considerable, I may at least hope to accomplish a part of it by treating of those facts which may be brought together under the common title of Animal Industries. Taken separately, they may be reproached with a certain anecdotal character, but we cannot fail to agree that taken altogether they constitute an important chapter in the sciences of life.