PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION. 



It is a great pleasure to me to be able to place in tbe bands of my pupils 

 in Oxford and London an Englisb translation of Professor Gegenbaur's 

 " Grundriss der Vergleicbenden Anatomie." I have to tbank tbe energy and 

 industry of Mr. Jeffrey Bell, of Magdalen College, Oxford (now one of 

 the staff of tbe British Museum), for the translation which he undertook and 

 carried through at my request, when I found tbat my time was too fully occu- 

 pied with other work to allow of my completing it myself within a suffi- 

 ciently short period from the date of publication of the German work. 



My share of the present work has therefore consisted in a careful 

 revision of the MS. and proof-sheets, which has been by no means a mere 

 formality, but enables me to give the assurance that the original work is 

 faithfully rendered in the translation. The chapter on the Tunicata I took 

 occasion to translate myself. 



That Professor Gegenbaur's work will be of great service to those 

 English students who do not already read German cannot be doubted. A\ r o 

 have some excellent treatises in the English language on animal morpho- 

 logy, notably the Manuals of the Anatomy of Vertebrate and Invertebrate 

 Animals, by Professor Huxley. But we do not possess any modern work 

 on Comparative Anatomy, properly so-called ; that is to say, a work in 

 which the comparative method is put prominently forward as the guiding 

 principle in the treatment of the results of anatomical investigation. The 

 present work therefore appears to me to form a most important supplement 

 to our existing treatises on the structure and classification of animals. It 

 has, over and above this, a distinctive and weighty recommendation in that 

 throughout and without reserve the Doctrine of Evolution appears as the 

 living, moving investment of the dry bones of anatomical fact. ISTot only 

 is the student thus taught to retain and accumulate his facts in relation to 

 definite problems which are actually exercising the ingenuity of investigators, 



