An Interesting Description Of Beasts, Birds, Fishes Reptiles, Insects, Etc., With Authentic Anecdotes

Volume 2: Birds, reptiles and amphibians, fishes, jointed animals, molluscs, etc.

With
643 Illustrations
(Including 12 Coloured Plates)
From Photographs

The welcome accorded to "The Living Races of Mankind," of which the present work is the natural extension, would be a practical encouragement, if such were needed, to treat of the Living Races of Animals in like fashion. But the interest now taken in Natural History is of a kind and calibre never previously known, and any work which presents the wonders of the Animal World in a new or clearer form may make some claim to the approval of the public. The means at the disposal of those responsible for the following pages are, by mere lapse of time, greater than those of their predecessors. Every year not only adds to the stock of knowledge of the denizens of earth and ocean, but increases the facilities for presenting their forms and surroundings pictorially. 

Photography applied to the illustration of the life of beasts, birds, fishes, insects, corals, and plants is at once the most attractive and the most correct form of illustration. In the following pages it will be used on a scale never equalled in any previous publication. Without straining words, it may be said that the subjects photographed have been obtained from every part of the world, many of them from the most distant islands of the Southern Ocean, the great barrier reef of Australia, the New Zealand hills, the Indian jungle, the South African veldt, and the rivers of British Columbia. Photographs of swimming fish, the flying bird, and of the leaping salmon will be reproduced as accurately as those of the large carnivora or the giant ungulates. In accordance with the example now being set by the Museum of Natural History, the living breeds of domesticated animals will also find a place.