PREFACE 



exactly what answers to their questions concerning life 

 biology can give, this book would speak. Biologists in 

 other fields, students in biology and related sciences and all 

 who have general interest, I have endeavored to address in 

 the following pages. 



I have the strong feeling that many thoughtful and 

 serious men in engineering, practical physics and chemistry 

 and laymen outside of these professions do not know what 

 modern biology is; even medical men often wonder what 

 this biology of to-day offers. They have genuine interest 

 in animal life and give much reflection to biological ques- 

 tions; yet present day biology leaves them untouched. For 

 such readers text-books offer little. What the professional 

 biologist denominates as biology — taxonomy, palaeontol- 

 ogy, ecology, physiology, morphology, embryology, phyto- 

 and zoo-geography, as well as genetics, biometry and the 

 like, with their various subdivisions, each of which is again 

 subdivided, as, for instance, cytology with its separate 

 domains ruled by karyologists, " protoplasmatikers," 

 "Golgiologists" and " mitochondriacs" etc., etc., — needs to 

 be brought into relation with the world outside biological 

 institutes and recording offices. To the uninitiated this 

 biological regimentation inspires awe because it connotes 

 the abstruse too far removed from everyday life. 



Even the most abstract truth needs to be expressed 

 with simplicity and clearness and thus relate itself to 

 everyday human experience. Complexity of expression is 

 often a sign of incomplete knowledge and certainly it is 

 not a sijie qua non of learning, though there be those who 

 consider profound and erudite that which they can never 

 understand. However cloistered biology may be as a 

 scientific research, as the science of life and having appeal 

 to all men it should make itself articulate beyond its 

 cloistered walls. I have endeavored in writing this book to 

 express myself with such clearness that even the uninitiated 



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