PREFACE. vii 



selected, and recourse is taken to human rather than 

 to other osteologies, inasmuch as the descriptions they 

 contain are at once more intelligible to beginners, as 

 being couched in less technical language, and more full 

 and precise, and therefore more valuable for the purpose 

 in question, than most of the ordinarily accessible de- 

 scriptions of the bones of the lower animals. 



Whilst the student is directed not to be dissatisfied 

 at any failure of his memory to retain, in the absence 

 of the natural object, the multitudinous details to which 

 a good descriptive work will have directed his attention 

 during his examination of it, he is warned that he must 

 not acquiesce in any failure of power to verify in such 

 an object, when present, the structural arrangements 

 which he is informed are to be seen in it. 



When this portion of the preliminary course is com- 

 pleted, a similar study of the principal organs of animal 

 and vegetable life, such as the brain, the heart, the 

 digestive tract, the hepatic, and the renal organs, is 

 entered upon; preparations of these structures pre- 

 served so as to be accessible to manipulation, and also 

 microscopic specimens, being available for comparison 

 with such descriptions as the ordinary works on An- 

 thropotomy give in their chapters on Visceral Ana- 

 tomy. 



It has been found that after this comparatively small 

 amount of previous preparation a student is competent 

 to follow such a description as is given in this work 

 at pp. 1-4 of a dissection of a mammal ; and it is re- 

 commended that in all cases the study of the described 



