Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1850 edition. Excerpt: ... ologists, and many interesting articles have been written in descriptions of those membranous parts (Epidermis et cutis vera) which contain the substance of color, and to which may be traced the origin of the hairs, feathers, scales, horns nails, and other peculiarities in men, mammiferous animals and birds. The structure of these tegumentary organs appears to be of a very variable character, and produces changes which cannot be fully accounted for on any of the known principles of science. We will notice a few instances. Many species of birds and quadrupeds are known to present themselves to us under two very distinct liveries in the course of the year. Our rice bird (Icterus agripennis, ) is yellowish olive in autumn and winter, and black and white in summer, differing so greatly in these semi-annual changes that the naturalist has infinite trouble in convincing the unpractised observer that that it is the same bird in different states of plumage. The Canada grouse (Tetrao Canadensis) is nearly black in summer and white in winter. We could enumerate upwards of fifty species of birds in America, in which great changes take place semi-annually, in summer and winter colors. The same is remarked in quadrupeds; the ermine, the variable, and Polar hare, it is well known, are brown in summer and white in winter. The peculiarities in those structures in the outer and inner parts of the skin, where the coloring matter is situated, and the process of nature in which these changes are produced, we endeavored to explain in an article which we published several years ago, and can only refer to the subject in this place, without entering into any details. These semi-annual changes in color are not only confined to such species as have a con Am....
