Now ready, 8vo, with 89 illustrations, $2.25 : 



Lessons in Elementary Biology 



By T. JEFFREY PARKER, B.Sc., F.R.S., 



PROFESSOR OF BIOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OTAGO DUNEDIN, NEW ZEALAND. 



With 89 illustrations, a Synopsis, Index, and Glossary. 8vo. $2.25. 



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 experi- 

 ence 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 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 his opinion. On 

 the other hand, the advantage to logical treatment of proceeding from the simple 

 to the complex of working upwards from protists to the higher plants and 

 animals is so immense that it is not to be abandoned without very good and 

 sufficient reasons. 



In my own experience I have found that the difficulty may be largely met by a 

 compromise ; namely, by beginning the work of the class by a comparative study 

 of one of the higher plants (flowering plant or fern) and of one of the higher animals 

 (rabbit, frog, or crayfish). 



By the time this introductory work is over, the student of average intelligence 

 has overcome preliminary difficulties, and is ready to profit by the second and 

 more systematic part of the course, in which organisms are studied in the order of 

 increasing complexity. 



It is such a course of general elementary biology which I have attempted to give 

 in the following Lessons, my aim having been to provide a book which may supply 

 in the study the place occupied in the laboratory by " Huxley and Martin," by giving 

 the connected narrative which would be out of place in a practical handbook. I 

 also venture to hope that the work may be of some use to students who have studied 

 zoology and botany as separate subjects, as well as that large class of workers whose 

 services to English science often receive but scant recognition, I mean amateur 

 microscopists. 



As to the general treatment of the subject I have been guided by three princi- 

 ples. Firstly, that the main object of teaching biology as part of a liberal education 

 is to familiarize the student not so much with the facts as with the ideas of science. 

 Secondly, that such ideas are best understood, at least by beginners, when studied 

 in connection with concrete types of animals and plants. And, thirdly, that the 

 types chosen should illustrate without unnecessary complication the particular 

 grade of organization they are intended to typify, and that exceptional cases are out 

 of place in an elementary course. 



The types have therefore been selected with a view of illustrating all the more 

 important modifications of structure, and the chief physiological processes in plants 

 and animals; and by the occasional introduction of special lessons on such sub- 

 jects as biogenesis, evolution, etc., the entire work is so arranged as to give a fairly 

 connected account of the general principles of biology. It is in obedience to the 

 last of the principles just enunciated that I have described so many of the Protozoa, 

 omitted all but a brief reference to the development of Hydra, and to the sexual 

 process in Penicillium, and described Nitella instead of Chara, and Polygordius 

 instead of the earthworm. The last-named substitution is of course only made 

 possible by the book being intended for the study and not for the laboratory, but I 

 feel convinced that the student who masters the structure of Polygordius, even from 

 figures and descriptions alone, will be in a far better position to profit by a practical 

 study of one of the higher worms. From the Preface. 



We have nothing but praise for Mr Parker's book. In well chosen language it 

 sets forth what is known on the subject-matter, and is in many ways an advance 

 on any treatise we have seen. Anti-Jacobin, London. 



MACMILLAN & CO,, 112 Fourth Avenue, New York, 



