Book Description

Excerpt from Twelve Lectures on Comparative Embryology, Delivered Before the Lowell Institute, in Boston, December and January, 1848-9 We feel both pleasure and pride in being able to present to the public the following Course of Lectures. It is thefirst enterprise of thekind in this city, and has therefore been attended with unusual trouble and expense. Embryology has but recently become the subject of scientific investigation. Few persons have as yet entered Upon it, and in this country it may be considered as entirely new; but it is destined to have a most important influence in the future progress of Zoology, and greatly to modify the present classification of animals. Prof. Agassiz has embodied in his Lectures all that has been hitherto done abroad, and has added numerous observations of his own, made in this country, and in a form at once highly scientific and so illustrated, as to be interesting to the common reader. The application here made of Embryology to the improvement of the classification of animals is peculiarly his own, as he has shown in his fourth Lecture. The point of the Lectures is to demonstrate that a natural method of classifying the animal kingdom may be attained by a comparison of the changes which are passed through by different animals in the course of their development from the egg to the perfect state; the changes they undergo being considered as a scale to appreciate the relative position of the series. The language has been retained almost precisely as delivered by the Professor, because, although in many instances it wears a foreign idiom, yet it is peculiarly expressive, and possesses a charm which would be lost in the attempt to reduce it to Saxon phrases. In proof of the fullness and accuracy of Dr. Stone's phonographic report, and also of the value of the phonographic system, we are enabled to state that several gentlemen had the curiosity to compare a portion of manuscript which the Professor had read, in one lecture, with the report of it; when it was found that every word appeared precisely as written, except that one word was missing, which the Professor stated he had purposely omitted in reading. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.