Life of Frank Buckland / by his brother-in-law, George C. Bompas ; with a portrait.

  • Bompas, George C.
Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Life of Frank Buckland / by his brother-in-law, George C. Bompas ; with a portrait. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    them up into a ball without the slightest appearance of a crease or wrinkle. ' In the case of the armadillo, who lives under a covering of horny flexible skin, please to observe that his backbone, and all other bones, as well as his lungs, heart, and other viscera, are all underneath this flexible roof to his body. In the tortoise we find quite another arrangement. Take a tortoise-shell and boil it, and you will find that you can pick off the scales one by one, and underneath the scales is a tenter-house of solid-formed bone. This dome-shaped house is not composed of a continuous mass of bone, as a tea-cup is made of a continuous plate of pottery, but rather of a series of small bones, all properly arched to suit the original curve, and jointed together in a most marvellous manner. It was not possible to rivet or bolt these plates together. Mortar could not be used to bind them together, as in the case of an arch made of bricks. What then must be done ? If the reader will examine for himself, he will find that the edges of each bone are deeply serrated, and that the sensations fit in such a work- manlike manner one into the other, that an amount of solidity is gained which could not have been equalled if the whole dome had been cast in a solid piece. ' But how is the tortoise to live in his house ? Where are his ribs to go to ? Let us examine. In ordinary animals the backbone forms an attachment for the ribs, and there are plenty of muscles outside the ribs. In the toi'toise, the ribs themselves are actually used to form part of the dome or roof By examining the inside of a tortoise-shell, the fact will at once become apparent. The ribs will be seen forming the girders of this wonderful