Transcriber’s Note: Italic text is enclosed in _underscores_; boldface text is enclosed in =equals signs=. Additional notes will be found near the end of this ebook. [Illustration] WINNERS IN LIFE’S RACE [Illustration: _Frontispiece._ LUMINOUS FISH OF THE DEEP SEA. (For description see Footnote 25, and List of Illustrations.)] THE WINNERS IN LIFE’S RACE OR THE GREAT BACKBONED FAMILY. BY ARABELLA B. BUCKLEY, AUTHOR OF “THE FAIRYLAND OF SCIENCE,” ETC. NEW YORK: D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 1, 3, AND 5 BOND STREET, 1883. PREFACE. Although the present volume, as giving an account of the _vertebrate_ animals, is a natural sequel to, and completion of, my former book, _Life and her Children_, which treated of _invertebrates_, yet it is a more independent work, both in plan and execution, than I had at first contemplated. This arises from the nature of the subject. The structure and habits of the lower forms of life are sufficiently simple to be treated almost without reference to geological history. When, however, I began to sketch out the lives and structure of the vertebrate animals, which are so closely interlinked one with another and yet so sharply separated into groups, I soon found that I must carry my readers into the past in order to give any intelligible account of the present. I have therefore endeavoured to describe graphically the early history of the backboned animals, so far as it is yet known to us, keeping strictly to such broad facts as ought in these days to be familiar to every child and ordinarily well-educated person, if they are to have any true conception of Natural History. At the same time I have dwelt as fully as space would allow, upon the lives of such modern animals as best illustrate the present divisions of the vertebrates upon the earth; my object being rather to follow the tide of life, and sketch in broad outline how structure and habit have gone hand-in-hand in filling every available space with living beings, than to multiply descriptions of the various species. If my younger readers will try and become familiar with the types selected, either alive in zoological gardens or preserved in good museums, they will, I hope, acquire a very fair idea of the main branches of the Backboned Family.[1]