Excerpt from Lessons in Elementary Biology On the other hand, the advantage to logical treatment of proceeding from the simple to the complex - of working upwards from protists to the higher plants and animals - is so immense that it is not to be abandoned without very good and sufficient reasons. In my own experience I have found that the difficulty may be largely met by a compromise, namely, by beginning the work of the class by a comparative study of one of the higher plants (flowering plant or fern) and of one of the higher animals (rabbit, frog, or crayfish). If there were no limitations as to time, and if it were possible to avoid alto gether the valley of the shadow of the coming examination, this preliminary work might be extended with advantage, and made to include a fairly complete although elementary study of animal physiology, with a minimum of anatomical detail, and a somewhat extensive study of flowering plants with special reference to their physiology and to their relations to the rest of nature. In any case by the time this introductory work is over, the student of average intelligence has overcome pre liminary difficulties, and is ready to profit by the second and more systematic part of the course in which organisms are studied in the order of increasing complexity. 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.