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Updated: June 13, 2025
There is no certainly known extinct order of Protozoa; there is but one among the Coelenterata that of the rugose corals; there is none among the Mollusca; there are three, the Cystidea, Blastoidea, and Edrioasterida, among the Echinoderms; and two, the Trilobita and Eurypterida, among the Crustacea; making altogether five for the great sub-kingdom of Annulosa.
If I had worked my way from a sponge instead of a lobster, I should have found it associated, by like ties, with a great number of other animals into the sub-kingdom Protozoa; if I had selected a fresh-water polype or a coral, the members of what naturalists term the sub-kingdom Cælenterata would have grouped themselves around my type; had a snail been chosen, the inhabitants of all univalve and bivalve, land and water, shells, the lamp shells, the squids, and the sea-mat would have gradually linked themselves on to it as members of the same sub-kingdom of Mollusca; and finally, starting from man, I should have been compelled to admit first, the ape, the rat, the horse, the dog, into the same class; and then the bird, the crocodile, the turtle, the frog, and the fish, into the same sub-kingdom of Vertebrata.
The animal kingdom consists, first, of a sub-kingdom of animals which possess a spinal column, or backbone, and which are known as vertebrate animals. Such are all beasts, birds, reptiles, and fishes. There is, further, an immense group of arthropods, consisting of all insects, crab-like creatures, hundred-legs and their allies, with spiders, scorpions, tics and mites.
The oldest group of plants with which we are well acquainted is that of whose remains coal is constituted; and as far as they can be identified, the carboniferous plants are ferns, or club-mosses, or Coniferae, in many cases generically identical with those now living! Among animals, instances of the same kind may be found in every sub-kingdom.
Then the Sub-kingdom VERTEBRATA is subdivided into the five 'Classes, Fishes, Amphibians, Reptiles, Birds, and Mammals, and these into smaller groups called 'Orders'; these into 'Families' and 'Genera'; while the last are finally broken up into the smallest assemblages, which are distinguished by the possession of constant, not-sexual, characters. These ultimate groups are Species.
A careful study of the resemblances and differences presented by animals has, in fact, led naturalists to arrange them into groups, or assemblages, all the members of each group presenting a certain amount of definable resemblance, and the number of points of similarity being smaller as the group is larger and 'vice versa'. Thus, all creatures which agree only in presenting the few distinctive marks of animality form the 'Kingdom' ANIMALIA. The numerous animals which agree only in possessing the special characters of Vertebrates form one 'Sub-Kingdom' of this Kingdom.
But a man and a fish are members of the same sub-kingdom Vertebrata, because they are much more like one another than either of them is to a worm, or a snail, or any member of the other sub-kingdoms.
Professor Haeckel proposes to break up the vertebrate sub-kingdom, first, into the two provinces of Leptocardia and Pachycardia; Amphioxus being in the former, and all other vertebrates in the latter division.
If I had worked my way from a sponge instead of a lobster, I should have found it associated, by like ties, with a great number of other animals into the sub-kingdom 'Protozoa'; if I had selected a fresh-water polype or a coral, the members of what naturalists term the sub-kingdom 'Coelenterata', would have grouped themselves around my type; had a snail been chosen, the inhabitants of all univalve and bivalve, land and water, shells, the lamp shells, the squids, and the sea-mat would have gradually linked themselves on to it as members of the same sub-kingdom of 'Mollusca'; and finally, starting from man, I should have been compelled to admit first, the ape, the rat, the horse, the dog, into the same class; and then the bird, the crocodile, the turtle, the frog, and the fish, into the same sub-kingdom of 'Vertebrata'.
But a man and a fish are members of the same sub-kingdom 'Vertebrata', because they are much more like one another than either of them is to a worm, or a snail, or any member of the other sub-kingdoms.
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