PREFACE TO THE FIRST KIHTIOX. 



To i>r sent in a concise and complete form an exact description of the 

 anatomical machinery of which the bodies of our domesticated animals are 

 composed, has been our aim in writing the book now offered for public 

 appreciation. 



We have sought for concision, not only in language, but also in the 

 choice of facts and ideas, with a kind of stubbornness. In imposing on 

 ourselves this condition, we believe we have rendered a service to those 

 who may have recourse to the book, in economising their time. In an age 

 of progress like the present, when the sciences are becoming multiplied and 

 developed, and when the human mind, seized by the fever of production, 

 gives forth every day books consecrated to the study of these sciences, there 

 is scarcely leisure to read and to learn. It is, therefore, the duty of a 

 writer to be brief. If he loads his book with puerile details ; if he says 

 that which may easily be divined by his reader ; and if he describes facts 

 and ideas too redundantly ; will he have attained the wished-for perfection 

 in a word, will he be complete ? No, he will be tedious : a serious 

 inconvenience, which neither elegance, warmth, nor brilliancy of style will 

 always excuse when met with in a didactic work, and especially in an 

 elementary treatise. 



No effort has been spared to achieve exactitude the primary desideratum 

 in such a work as this ; neither have evenings spent in bibliographic re- 

 searches, nor fatigue in the dissecting-room been considered. All published 

 writings on animal organisation, general treatises, special manuals, mono- 

 graphs, and articles in periodicals have been read and interrogated. But we 

 have more particularly sought for information from Nature that certain 

 and infallible guide, always wise, even in her diversities ; we have consulted 

 In r. scalpel in hand, with a perseverance that nothing could repel. Animals 

 of every kind were had recourse to, and we have largely profited by the 

 immense resources which our position as principal of anatomical t aching 

 in tho Imperial Veterinary School has placed nt our disposal. 



