rousing a latent aptitude, when the
possibilities of other methods of approach are excluded-- and in
so doing, of elevating the individual to that position for which he was
by nature qualified, ensuring him the introduction to the one sphere
of labour for which he was born-- it will have created its own defence,
and have merited the confidence of all right-thinking people. The
plucking of one such brand from the burning is ample compensation
for the energy expended on any number of average dullards, who but
require to be left alone to find their natural level.

Mr. Wells' little book is avowedly written for examination purposes,
and in conformity with the requirements of the now familiar "type
system" of teaching. Recent attempts have been made to depreciate
this. While affording a discipline in detailed observation and
manipulation second to that of no other branch of learning, it
provides for that "deduction" and "verification" by which all science
has been built up; and this appears to me ample justification for its
retention, as the most rational system which can be to-day adopted.
Evidence that its alleged shortcomings are due rather to defective
handling than to any inherent weakness of its own, would not be
difficult to produce. Although rigid in its discipline, it admits of
commentatorial treatment which, while heightening the interest of
the student, is calculated to stimulate alike his ambition and his
imagination. That the sister sciences of Botany and Zoology fall
under one discipline, is expressed in the English usage of the term
"Biology." Experience has shown that the best work in either
department has been produced by those who have acquired on
all-round knowledge of at least the elementary stages of both; and,
that the advanced morphologist and physiologist are alike the better
for a familiarity with the principles-- not to say with the progressive
advancement-- of each other's domain, is to-day undeniable. These
and other allied considerations, render it advisable that the
elementary facts of morphology and physiology should be presented
to the beginner side by side-- a principle too frequently neglected in
books which, like this one, are specially written for the biological
neophyte. Although the student is the wiser for the actual
observation of the fact of nature, he becomes the better only when
able to apply them, as for example, by the judicious construction of
elementary generalizations, such as