Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863, by TICKNOR AND FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. EDUCATION DEPT.. THIRD EDITION. UNIVERSITY PRESS: PREFACE. THE series of papers collected in this volume may be considered as a complement or commentary to my "Essay on Classification," since I have endeavored to present here in a more popular form the views first expressed in that work. And although the direct intention of these pages has been, às their title indicates, to give some general hints to young students as to the methods by which scientific truth has been reached, including a general sketch of the history of science in past times, yet I have also wished to avail myself of this opportunity to enter my earnest protest against the transmutation theory, revived of late with so much ability, and so generally received. It is my belief that naturalists are chasing a phantom, in their search after some material gradation among created beings, by which the whole Animal Kingdom may have been derived by successive development from a 541763 |