Excerpt from Reptiles, Amphibia, Fishes and Lower Chordata Having conceived the plan of recording, at any rate in broad outline, the history of the vertebrates from the evolutionist's point of View, I allotted to myself, as many already know, the task of writing the volume on Birds, and proposed to edit the remaining volumes. Rather than attempt to write them. And this because the day is now past when any single writer can hope to achieve such a task with even tolerable success, for this is the day of specialists. As a consequence, for the first time in the annals of natural history, the complete life-story of the reptiles, amphibia, and fishes, and those primitive creatures which lie at the foundations, so to 'speak, Of the great house of the vertebrates, is told as only specialists can tell it. The very existence of these primitive ani mals is unsuspected by most of us, but, as Professor Arthur Thomson shows, they present us with some most interesting and most important problems. The student of sociology will find in his chapters, no less than in those concerning more familiar creatures, much food for reflection bearing on the subjects of adaptation to environment, degeneration, and so on. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.