PREFACE 



" GOOD wine needs no bush," but it will perhaps not be an in- 

 fringement of this maxim to introduce, in a few words, Professor 

 Luciani's excellent Text-Book of Physiology to the English-reading 

 public. The Italian Text-book is now in its third edition, the 

 final pages being in the Press. One or other of the earlier editions 

 has been translated into French, German, and Eussian, and it is 

 a matter for surprise that we have had to wait so long for an 

 English version. 



In the making of physiological text -books, we are at the 

 parting of the ways. The physiologists of the past generation 

 were brought up to know with familiarity all that had been 

 recently done in physiological research, whether in vertebrates or 

 invertebrates, in animals or in plants. The facts were not so 

 numerous that they could not be stored in the memory without 

 cumbering the judgment, and Physiologists could in some sort 

 be first-hand authorities on all branches of the subject. That 

 condition has been gradually passing away, and it is hardly 

 possible for any one who is not of the old school to write an 

 advanced text-book covering the whole ground of Physiology. 

 Thus the text-book of single authorship is giving way to the 

 text-book of multiple authorship. The latter, whatever its merits, 

 has not the unity of view and the sense of proportion which 

 belong to the former qualities very important in a book intended 

 for students. 



Professor Luciani's book, whilst describing phenomena with 

 considerable detail, treats lucidly the broad principles to be 

 deduced from them. It stands midway between the text-book 

 which confines itself to summing up the results of physiological 

 investigation, and that which gives also a minute historical 

 account of the progress of investigation. It deals with the main 



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