Scientific Papers and Addresses, Vol. 2 (Classic Reprint)

Book excerpt: Excerpt from Scientific Papers and Addresses, Vol. 2 Having recently had occasion to study the habits and anatomy of the English Marten Cats, Mustela martes and Mustela foina, and having looked into the history of these animals and of certain other carnivora which have borne the same name as they in ancient and modern times, I have come to think that the latter of the two creatures specified namely, the white-breasted marten, Mustela foina, was the animal which the ancient Greeks and Romans employed for the same domestic purposes for which we employ the Felis domesticus; whilst this latter animal has been employed as at present in Western Europe for probably a considerably longer period than the last thousand years. Other writers to whom I have referred, and amongst them notably Dureau de la Malle, have adopted the former of these conclusions; but upon premises more or less inadequate or incorrect or both. I am well assured that this question has for the philosophic naturalist much more than a merely archaeological interest, for in the resolving of it we may have light cast upon the working of the principle which Mr. Darwin has shown to be more potent than any other in regulating the distribution of species, and which Van Beneden, with the well-known physiological aphorisms of Wolff and Treviranus before his eyes, has formulated in the words, 'les etres qui composent une Faune sont solidaires entre eux comma les organes d'un etre vivant.' 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.