PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION. 



It is a great pleasure to me to be able to place in the hands of my pupils 

 in Oxford and London an English translation of Professor Gegenbaur's 

 " Grundriss der Vergleichenden Anatomic." I have to thank the energy and 

 industry of Mr. Jeffrey Bell, of Magdalen College, Oxford (now one of 

 the staff of the British INIuseum), for the translation which he undertook and 

 carried through at my request, when I found that my time Avas too fully occu- 

 pied with other work to allow of my completing it myself within a suffi- 

 ciently short period from the date of publication of the German work. 



My share of the present work has therefore consisted in a careful 

 revision of the IMS. and proof-sheets, which has been by no means a mere 

 formality, but enables me to give the assurance that the original "work is 

 faithfully rendered in the translation. The chapter on the Tunicata I took 

 occasion to translate myself. 



That Professor Gegenbaur's work will be of great service to those 

 English students who do not already read German cannot be doubted. We 

 have some excellent treatises in the English language on anintal morpho- 

 logy, notably the Manuals of the Anatomy of Vertebrate and Invertebrate 

 Animals, by Professor Huxley. But we do not possess any modern work 

 on Comparative Anatomy, properly so-called ; that is to say, a Avork in 

 Avhich the comparative method is put prominently forward as the guiding 

 principle in the treatment of the results of anatomical investigation. The 

 present Avork therefore appears to me to form a most important supplement 

 to our existing treatises on the structure and classification of animals. It 

 has, over and above this, a distinctive and Aveighty recommendation in tliat 

 throughout and Avithout reserve the Doctrine of Evolution appears as the 

 living, moving investment of the dry bones of anatomical fact. Wot only 

 is the student thus taught to retain and accumulate his facts in relation to 

 definite ]iroblems which are actually exercising the ingenuity of investigators, 



