The Living Animals of the World, Volume 2 (of 2): A Popular Natural History

In Short

This volume completes a massive Victorian popular survey of global fauna, covering birds, reptiles, amphibians, fishes, insects, molluscs, and microscopic organisms. Penned by a coalition of specialist naturalists, the text eschews dry taxonomies in favor of descriptive field observations, anatomical details, and accounts of animal behavior. Its central narrative traces the vast spectrum of living forms through their evolutionary adaptations to land, air, and water. The work endures because it documents a turning point in natural history, capturing both rich ecological biodiversity and the relentless, industrial-scale human exploitation—through hunting, egg-harvesting, and habitat destruction—that threatened many of these species at the dawn of the twentieth century.

The Story

The volume initiates its natural history survey among the flightless and ancient avian lines, detailing the vast, dwindling populations of emeus in the Australian interior and the courtship, incubation, and anatomical peculiarities of ratites. From these terrestrial origins, the scope expands into the wide world of birds, charting the specialized habits of crowned pigeons in Australasia, the sheer soaring capacity of the giant petrel, and the precarious sea-cliff breeding colonies of northern ocean birds.

A stark reality emerges as the prose navigates through these avian chapters: human enterprise intersects continually with wild life. The text details how St. Kilda islanders harvest tens of thousands of fulmars for winter stores and oil, while wild-fowlers capture storm-petrels directly from their nests to extract stomach oils. On inaccessible ocean cliffs, gannets gather by the thousands to raise their young, only to be hooked, processed, and sold in regional markets. Structural adaptations are cataloged alongside these human interactions; for example, the gannet's complete loss of external nostrils and its internal network of subcutaneous air-cells illustrate the extreme physical modifications demanded by high-velocity plunge-diving.

Moving from ocean birds to terrestrial predators, the survey examines tropical harpy-eagles, Philippine monkey-eating eagles, and vanishing European sea-eagles, noting how specialized bill shapes and hunting tactics allow these raptors to dominate their respective forest, mountain, and coastal niches. In contrast, the narrative turns to the secretive owl-parrot, or kakapo, of New Zealand, describing its nocturnal foraging trails, communal underground burrows, and extreme vulnerability to torchlight hunting and introduced dogs. In Central American forests, the magnificent quezal sits nearly motionless before making sudden, elegant swoops for tree fruit, while South American toucans display lightweight, air-filled bony filigree beneath their enormous, brightly colored beaks.

Crossing the boundary from air to land and water, the account shifts to reptiles and amphibians. It catalogs the dietary divides between marine turtles—contrasting the strictly herbivorous green turtle with the carnivorous loggerhead—and notes the territorial behavior of green and ocellated lizards. Adaptations become increasingly specialized, as seen in the South African egg-eating snake, which utilizes enamel-tipped vertebral spines projecting into its throat to saw open stolen bird and hen eggs before swallowing the contents and rejecting the shell. subterranean caverns yield blind proteus salamanders, while aquariums reveal the axolotl's capacity to absorb its external gills and transition from aquatic tadpole to terrestrial salamander.

The survey then descends into marine and freshwater environments, charting the anatomy and behavior of fishes. It outlines how gurnards utilize modified, finger-like pectoral fin rays to crawl over the sea floor and turn over stones for prey, while communicating via air-bladder emissions. In massive northern waterways, giant sturgeons block rivers during breeding runs, fueling major caviare and isinglass industries, while ancient fringe-finned bichirs survive as living relics of archaic geological eras.

Finally, the text explores the microscopic and jointed realms, detailing the predatory legs of mantis-flies, the elaborate underground nests of termites, and the sudden, intense excitement of field naturalists capturing rare bird-winged butterflies in tropical archipelagos. The narrative concludes in the ocean depths, tracing brittle-stars, luminous flagellates that color entire coastlines, and microscopic, shell-building foraminifera whose tiny discarded skeletons drop to the sea floor to form the vast chalk strata of the earth.

How It Unfolds

The flightless and sea-roaming birds The survey opens with ground-dwelling ratites like the emeu, detailing their physical endurance, male-driven egg incubation, and rapid disappearance from settled lands. It then moves offshore to observe giant petrels gorging on seal carcasses and northern seabirds nesting in dense cliff colonies.

The predatory and specialized flyers The focus shifts to raptors, parrots, and rainforest species, analyzing the extreme anatomical specializations of monkey-eating eagles and toucans. It highlights the secretive, flight-impaired kakapo of New Zealand alongside the brilliant, solitary foraging maneuvers of the Central American quezal.

The armored and aquatic reptiles Transitioning to cold-blooded land and amphibious creatures, the narrative details marine turtles, territorial lizards, and specialized snakes. It highlights structural adaptations, such as the egg-eating snake's internal throat-teeth, and the cave-dwelling, persistently gilled salamanders.

The finned inhabitants of deep and fresh waters Descending into marine and river ecosystems, the text charts the diversity of fish life from bottom-dwelling gurnards to giant sturgeons. It documents how gurnards search the seabed using modified fin-rays and explains the vast commercial harvesting of sturgeon roe in Eastern European rivers.

The jointed, winged, and microscopic worlds The final movement examines insects, invertebrates, and microscopic organisms, detailing predatory mantis-flies, wood-boring beetles, and brilliant tropical butterflies. It concludes at the base of the food chain with phosphorescent marine animalcules and shell-secreting foraminifera that build oceanic geological strata.

The People

W. P. Pycraft and Fellow Naturalists The expert contributors serve as the main guiding presences, synthesizing taxonomic facts with direct field observations. They aim to inform the general public about animal structures and habits, continually balancing objective morphological description with urgent warnings regarding species depletion.

Alfred Russel Wallace The celebrated naturalist appears through firsthand accounts of tropical field collection in the Eastern Islands. Driven by an intense desire to discover and document unknown species, his emotional encounter with the glorious Croesus butterfly illustrates the passionate thrill and physical toll of field taxonomy.

Professor Moseley and Professor Newton Field researchers whose direct observations supply vivid details of animal behavior and local harvesting traditions. Moseley records the vulture-like feeding frenzies and labored escapes of giant petrels, while Newton documents the rigid seasonal harvest schedules of bird-dependent island communities like St. Kilda.

Local Hunters and Wild-Fowlers Various nameless human actors throughout the text whose economic pursuits and hunting practices drive the narrative's exploration of human-animal interaction. They range from Pacific islanders gathering frigate-bird feathers for head-dresses to European bird-catchers netting thousands of migrating ortolans for luxury food markets.

In Its Own Voice

"The birds gorge themselves with food, just like the vultures, and are then unable to fly."

Professor Moseley observes the gluttonous feeding habits of the giant petrel along seal-hunting coasts, where the birds become so weighed down by scavenged meat that they must run along the ground disgorging their meal before gaining enough lightness to take flight.

"On taking it out of my net and opening the glorious wings, my heart began to beat violently, the blood rushed to my head, and I felt much more like fainting than I have done when in apprehension of immediate death."

Naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace describes the overwhelming physical and emotional sensation of capturing a male Croesus butterfly in the tropical forest, illustrating the profound passion that drove nineteenth-century field collectors.

"Normally this snake subsists on the eggs of the smaller birds, but when short of this supply has been known to leave the trees and rob hen-roosts, being able, notwithstanding its comparatively small size, to dilate its mouth and throat for the reception of a hen's egg."

The text details the remarkable feeding habits of the South African egg-eating snake, highlighting how its elastic throat and modified vertebral spines allow it to ingest and crack eggs far larger than its own head.

What It's Really About

Beneath its exhaustive cataloging of species, the book is fundamentally about physical adaptation and the relentless struggle for ecological existence. It investigates how bodily forms—from the compressed bill of a forest eagle to the air-filled beak of a toucan or the enamel-tipped throat-spines of an egg-eating snake—are precisely sculpted by dietary demands and immediate environments.

The work also serves as an unintended testament to the heavy footprint of industrializing humanity. By recording the systematic netting of migrating songbirds, the wholesale clubbing of sea-cliff fledglings, and the clearing of native habitats, the authors present a world where ancient evolutionary lineages are rapidly colliding with human commercial expansion.

Finally, the text meditates on the vast scale and interconnectedness of nature. It links the macroscopic world of eagles and sturgeons to the microscopic realm of root-footed animalcules, showing how tiny, single-celled organisms dying in ancient oceans ultimately form the bedrock, chalk cliffs, and geological strata of the modern world.

Why Read It Today

This volume appeals to readers who delight in classic natural history, historical field biology, and rich, unvarnished descriptions of the living world. Reading it feels like walking through a vast, meticulously organized museum of natural curiosities guided by deeply knowledgeable observers. The prose is clean, direct, and unpretentious, relying on vivid concrete specifics rather than modern documentary theatricality to convey the wonder of the animal kingdom.

What stays with the reader is the incredible diversity of survival strategies showcased across every chapter. Learning how a gurnard uses its fin-rays to feel along the ocean floor, or how a tiny snake swallows and processes a hen's egg, offers a fascinating glimpse into the mechanics of natural selection as understood at the turn of the twentieth century.

The book is not without its period difficulties. Modern readers must navigate older taxonomic names, archaic regional terminology, and an unapologetic, late-Victorian casualness regarding trophy hunting, commercial wildlife harvesting, and specimen collection. Yet these elements also give the work its historical honesty. It stands as an authentic, detailed snapshot of global biodiversity at a crucial historical moment, capturing both the wonder of the natural world and the delicate threshold of its conservation.