PREFACE. 



THIS elementary textbook of Physiology has been pre- 

 pared in response to many requests for a textbook 

 framed on the same plan as the "Human Body," but 

 abridged for the use of students younger, or having less 

 time to give to the subject, than those for whom that book 

 was designed. This demand^ and the fact that a second 

 edition of the ft Human Body " was called for within twelve 

 months of its publication, have shown me that I was not 

 wrong in believing that the teachers of Elementary Physi- 

 ology in the United States were ready and anxious for a 

 textbook in which the subject was treated from a scientific 

 standpoint, and not presented merely as a set of facts, 

 useful to know, which pupils were to learn by heart like the 

 multiplication table. 



That some instruction in at least one branch of Natural 

 Science should form a part of the regular educational cur- 

 riculum is now so generally admitted that there is no need 

 to insist upon it. But if this instruction simply means 

 teaching by rote certain facts, no matter how important 

 these facts may be, the proper function of Natural Science 

 in a system of education is missed. Mere training of the 

 memory (no unimportant- matter) is otherwise sufficiently 



