que figures of the
first edition. Not only have these plates gained immensely in grace
and accuracy, but the lettering is now distinct-- an improvement that
any student who has had to hunt my reference letters in the first
edition will at once appreciate.

H. G. Wells
November, 1892. {First Edition.}
December, 1893. {Second Edition.}

-The Rabbit._

1. _External Form and General Considerations._

Section 1. It is unnecessary to enter upon a description of the
appearance of this familiar type, but it is not perhaps superfluous, as
we proceed to consider its anatomy, to call attention to one or two
points in its external, or externally apparent structure. Most of our
readers know that it belongs to that one of two primary animal
divisions which is called the vertebrata, and that the distinctive
feature which place it in this division is the possession of a spinal
column or backbone, really a series of small ring-like bones, the
vertebrae (Figure 1 v.b.) strung together, as it were, on the main
nerve axis, the spinal cord (Figure 1 s.c.). This spinal column can be
felt along the neck and back to the tail. This tail is small, tilted up,
and conspicuously white beneath, and it serves as a "recognition
mark" to guide the young when, during feeding, an alarm is given
and a bolt is made for the burrows. In those more primitive (older and
simpler-fashioned) vertebrata, the fishes, the tail is much large and
far more important, as compared with the rest of the body, than it is
in most of the air-inhabiting vertebrates. In the former it is invariably a
great muscular mass to propel the body forward; in the latter it may
disappear, as in the frog, be simply a feather-bearing stump, as in
the pigeon, a fly flicker, as in the cow or horse, a fur cape in squirrel,
or be otherwise reduced and modified to meet special requirements.

Section 2. At the fore end, or as English zoologists prefer to say,
anterior end, of the vertebral column of the rabbit, is of course the
skull, containing the anterior portion of the nerve axis, the brain
(Figure 1 br.). Between the head and what is called "the body," in
the more restricted sense of the word, is the neck. The neck gives
freedom of movement to the head, enables the animal to look this
way and that, to turn its ears about to determine the direction of a
sound, and to perform endless motions in connexion with biting and
so forth easily. We may note that in types which swim through