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PREFACE. 



-iHIS book is intended to meet certain requirements 

 which, as the writer's experience has shown him, are 

 felt by students of Comparative Anatomy. It consists 

 of three parts ; the first is an introduction, giving a 

 Classification of the animal kingdom, with a Zooto- 

 mical account of its various Sub-kingdoms and their 

 subordinate Divisions and Classes; the second con- 

 sists of descriptions of certain readily procurable spe- 

 cimens which illustrate in the concrete a very large 

 number of the systematic descriptions contained in the 

 introduction; and the third contains descriptions of 

 figures supplementary to the descriptions of speci- 

 mens, and intended to aid them in furnishing that 

 groundwork of particular facts, without which it is 

 impossible to obtain any real knowledge or perma- 

 nent hold of general principles. The distinctive cha- 

 racter of the book consists in its attempting so to 

 combine the concrete facts of Zootomy with the out- 

 lines of systematic Classification as to enable the 

 student to put them for himself into their natural 

 relations of foundation and superstructure. The foun- 

 dation may be made wider, and the superstructure may 



