Animal Parasites and Messmates (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: belief in an Almighty Creator and a Divine Wisdom, who has created the heavens and the earth according to an eternal and preconceived plan, can alone resolve the enigmas of nature, as well as those of human life. Let us still erect statues to men who have been useful to their fellow-creatures, and have distinguished themselves by their genius, but let us not forget what we owe to Him who has placed marvels in each grain of sand, a world in every drop of water." At first we shall treat of animal messmates, secondly of mutualists, and thirdly of parasites. chapter{Section 4ANIMAL PARASITES MESSMATES. CHAPTER I. ANIMAL MESSMATES. The messmate is he who is received at the table of his neighbour to partake with him of the produce of his day's fishing; it would be necessary to coin a name to designate him who only requires from his neighbour a simple place on board his vessel, and does not ask to partake of his provisions. The messmate does not live at the expense of his host; all that he desires is a home or his friend's superfluities. The parasite instals himself either temporarily . or definitively in the house of his neighbour; either with his consent or by force, he demands from him his living, and very often his lodging. But the precise limit at which commensalism begins is not always easily to be ascertained. There are animals which live as messmates with others only at a certain period of their lives, and which provide for their own support at other times; others are only messmatesunder certain given circumstances, and do not usually merit this appellation. In the higher animals, this relation between them is generally well known, and justly appreciated, but it is not the same in the inferior ranks; and more than one animal may pass for a messmate or...