PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 



VERY soon after I began to teach Natural History, or what 

 we now call Biology, at the Royal School of Mines, some 

 twenty years ago, I arrived at the conviction that the study 

 of living bodies is really one discipline, which is divided into 

 Zoology and Botany simply as a matter of convenience ; and 

 that the scientific Zoologist should no more be ignorant of 

 the fundamental phenomena of vegetable life, than the 

 scientific Botanist of those of animal existence. 



Moreover, it was obvious that the road to a sound and 

 thorough knowledge of Zoology and Botany lay through" 

 Morphology and Physiology ; and that, as in the case of all 

 other physical sciences, so in these, sound and thorough 

 knowledge was only to be obtained by practical work in 

 the laboratory. 



The thing to be done, therefore, was to organize a course 

 of practical instruction in Elementary Biology, as a first 

 step towards the special work of the Zoologist and Botanist. 

 But this was forbidden, so far as I was concerned, by the 

 limitations of space in the building in Jermyn Street, which 

 possessed no room applicable to the purpose of a labora- 



