PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION 



IN his preface to the new edition of the well-known 

 Practical Biology, Professor Huxley gives his reasons for 

 beginning the study of organised nature with the higher 

 forms of animal life, to the abandonment of his earlier 

 method of working from the simpler to the more complex 

 organisms. He says in effect that experience has taught 

 him the unwisdom of taking the beginner at once into the 

 new and strange region of microscopic life, and the advan- 

 tage of making him commence his studies with a subject of 

 which he is bound to know something the elementary 

 anatomy and physiology of a vertebrate animal. 



Most teachers will probably agree with the general truth 

 of this opinion. The first few weeks of the beginner in 

 natural science are so fully occupied in mastering an un- 

 familiar and difficult terminology and in acquiring the art 

 of using his eyes and fingers, that he is simply incapable for 

 a time of grasping any of the principles of the science ; and, 

 this being the case, the more completely his new work can 



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