In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: 12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 13 And the evening and the morning were the third day."

20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. 21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. 23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. 25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

The above words, found in the first book of the Bible are the subject of this gallery and a subject near to the heart of the author.

Biologists divide life into classifications, but the debate of how to divide and into what classifications has continued for three hundred years and still the biologists have not come to a consensus.

One thing is certain, the vastness of God′s creation is truly amazing.

Albeit an agreed system of classification has not been fully achieved, however, all agree that the purpose of classification is to organize species into common groups for the purpose of further study. This study ia the branch of science called taxonomy and further serves to find, identify, describe, classify and name species.

The basic unit of such classification is species which is identified as a group able to breed amongst themselves and which all bear mutual resemblance. A broader classification is the genus. Several genera make up a family and several families comprise an order.

One or more orders comprise a class which, in turn comprise a phylum and which comprise a kingdom. Currently, there are seven kingdom in taxonomy.

Probably the division that makes the most sense to me is the one most recently proposed, the Life Kingdoms or otherwise known as the Seven Kingdoms model:

Animals, Archaea, Bacteria, Chromista, Fungi, Plants, and Protozoa.

At this time, the subject of this photo gallery, which is call The Life Gallery or sometimes The Life Kingdoms Gallery, will primarily include photos from the species in the Animal Kingdom and my goal is to include as large a variety of these animals and my photo lens happens to come upon.

This gallery will begin with only vertebrate animals, those with a backbone and which are know in the scientific community as the Phylum Chordata. At first, the Animal Kingdom Gallery will concentrate primarily on birds and mammals, with other life kingdoms to be included at at some time later.

One other life kingdom I have interest in is the plant kingdom and as I begin to examine different types of plants, the Plant Kingdom Gallery will begin to show more and more plants.