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 organized 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 advantage of making him com- 

 mence 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 



