Elements of comparative anatomy / by Carl Gegenbaur ; translated by F. Jeffrey Bell ; the translation revised and a preface written by E. Ray Lankester.

  • Carl Gegenbaur
Date:
1878
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Elements of comparative anatomy / by Carl Gegenbaur ; translated by F. Jeffrey Bell ; the translation revised and a preface written by E. Ray Lankester. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITIOE. OuE knowledge lias been so mucli increased in extent and exactness in almost every department of Comparative Anatomy since the time when I converted my Grundzüge into the first edition of this smaller manual—the Grundriss ^'—that the publication o£ a second edition hardly seemed an easy task. Nevertheless, I gladly undertook it, for I had observed so much new evidence of the importance of the doctrine of development in anatomical enquiry. The road along which science may travel forward success- fully seems indeed to be growing easier, yet the distance which we have made is but short in comparison with that which lies in front of us, and far beyond our view. Every question solved leads again to fresh problems, and renders unstable even what seemed to have taken a definite form. There are, therefore, great difficulties in giving such a comprehensive presentation of the subject as a text-book ought to supply. I have tried as much as possible to evade these difficulties where I have been unable to overcome them. Much remains unaltered, because recent in- vestigations appear to demand fundamental changes, the concrete expression of which cannot be immediately taken in hand* I have somewhat modified the arrangement of the matter^ 1 can hardly be blamed for separating the Brachiopoda from the Mollusca, and treating them as forming an independent phylum. Nor indeed is the change a real one, for even in my Grundzüge I drew especial attention to the great difference that obtained between them and the other Mollusca.^^ The Tunicata have
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