The World's Foundations; or, Geology for Beginners · Ch. X · Unit 2: Part II: Ancient seas and coal forests
11. Two kingdoms
Goal: Your child can sort living things using the book's groups: animals with and without a backbone, and flowering and non-flowering plants.
You'll need
- The book, open to this chapter
- About 12 pictures or real objects: a shell, a feather, a pine cone, a leaf, a fern frond, a picture of a mushroom, a fish, a frog, a snail, a beetle or spider, a starfish, a dog or cat
- A notebook for a "rock journal" and a pencil
What's in the book
Chapter X explains the Animal and Vegetable Kingdoms, says that groups shade into one another "as the tints of a rainbow", and defines an organ. It lists the book's four classes of boneless animals and four classes of backboned animals, and its groups of plants, in tables at the end.
The lesson, step by step
A question to start
SayHow would you sort every living thing in the world into groups?
Let your child suggest a few ways (by size, by color, by where they live). Then read how the book does it.
Read the chapter together
Read Chapter X (pages 91 to 100), including the tables. Stop on:
Each class or kind of animals or vegetables, instead of being sharply cut off from the next by a wall or moat, passes into it by delicate shades, much as the tints of a rainbow melt softly into one another.
Backbone or not
The book's first big split: animals without a backbone (tiny one-celled creatures, starfish and jellyfish, oysters and snails, crabs and insects) and animals with a backbone (fishes, reptiles, birds, mammals).
Read the mark of a mammal:
The great distinguishing mark of the Mammals is that they suckle their young.
Sort the pile
Spread out your pictures and objects. First sort into animals and plants. Then sort the animals into "backbone" and "no backbone", and the plants into "flowers and seeds" and "no flowers" (ferns, mosses, seaweeds).
Use the tables on pages 98 to 100 to check.
The in-betweens
The book points out that some creatures sit between groups. The frog breathes in water when young and in air when grown, so it sits between fish and reptiles: an amphibian. Ask your child to find the frog in the pile and decide where it goes.
Why this matters for geology
Giberne says that naturalists made these groups without looking at rocks, and yet the rocks seem to show life appearing in much the same order, from simple to complex. Part II follows that story age by age.
Tell it back
Ask: What is an organ? What are the four classes of animals with a backbone? What makes a mammal a mammal?
What we know now
Scientists today sort living things by how they are related, and some of the book's groups have been rearranged. Mushrooms are now in a kingdom of their own (fungi), not with plants. Tiny one-celled creatures like rhizopods and diatoms are put in other groups, not with animals and plants. Starfish and jellyfish are no longer grouped together, and worms are not grouped with insects and crabs.
Afterwards
Notice it this week: on a walk, name each creature you see as "backbone" or "no backbone", and each plant as flowering or not.
Answers to the book's problems
An organ is a part of a living body made to do a particular job, like the eye for seeing. The four backboned classes in the book are fishes, reptiles, birds and mammals. Mammals feed their young on milk.
Worked out for this site from the scan. If a number in your copy differs, trust the book.