X 



PREFACE. 



WE feel both pleasure and pride in being able to present to the public the 

 following Course of Lectures. It is the first enterprise of the kind in this city, 

 and has therefore been attended with unusual trouble and expense. 



s 



EMBRYOLOGY has but recently become the subject of scientific investigation. 

 Few persons have as yet entered upon it, and in this country it may be considered 

 as entirely new ; but it is destined to have a most important influence in the future 

 progress of Zoology, and greatly to modify the present classification of animals. 

 Prof. AGASSIZ has embodied in his Lectures all that has been hitherto done abroad, 

 and has added numerous observations of his own, made in this country, and in a 

 form at once highly scientific and so illustrated, as to be interesting to the common 

 reader. The application here made of Embryology to the improvement of the 

 classification of animals is peculiarly his own, as he has shown in his fourth 

 Lecture* 



The point of the Lectures is to demonstrate that a natural method of classi- 

 fying the animal kingdom may be attained by a comparison of the changes which 

 are passed through by different animals in the course of their development from 

 the egg to the perfect state ; the changes they undergo being considered as a scale 

 to appreciate the relative position of the series. 



The language has been retained almost precisely as delivered by the Professor, 

 because, although in many instances it wears a foreign idiom, yet it is peculiarly 

 expressive, and possesses a charm which would be lost in the attempt to reduce 

 it to Saxon phrases, 



In proof of the fullness and accuracy of Dr. STONE'S phonographic report, and 

 also of the value of the phonographic system, we are enabled to state that 

 several gentlemen had the curiosity to compare a portion of manuscript which 

 the Professor had read, in one lecture, with the report of it ; when it was found 

 that every word appeared precisely as written, except that one word was missing, 



which the Professor stated he had purposely omitted in reading. 



o ; 

 Boston, January , 1849, 



