Two lectures on the circulation, respiration, and mode of nutrition in animal and plants ... / Delivered before the Chesterfield Literary and Philosophical Society.

  • Robertson, William Henry, 1810-1897.
Date:
1832
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Two lectures on the circulation, respiration, and mode of nutrition in animal and plants ... / Delivered before the Chesterfield Literary and Philosophical Society. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    PREFACE. In compliance with a long established and almost universally followed custom, the Author of the subjoined little work,—a work which is indeed little in two senses of the term, will not expose it to the searching eye of that most intelligent of critics and best patron of authors, the public, without a few preliminary remarks: it seems to him hut lair that, ere lie commits his bautling to so severe a scrutiny, he should at once state its pretensions, and at once give his reasons for thus disposing of it. With regard to its pretensions he must in justice say, that he has not advanced any new doctrines, that he has not broached any new theories, that he has not in any degree enlarged the lamentably confined range either of vegetable or animal physiology. All that he has attempted is to deck out the subject in a somewhat different garb, and all that he aims at is to give a popular view of these interesting topics; a view stripped of those technicalities which would make it unintelligible to any but the initiated, and thus to render it capable of inducing some, perchance many, to enter on the study of these departments, who had previously been almost ignorant that such subjects possessed sufficient captivation either to gratify or interest them. If these, his reasons, and these, his motives for publication seem suf¬ ficiently good, the Author has only to trust that the reader will peruse his pages with candour, and to beg of him to bestow what censure he may conceive to be the Author’s due with a lenient hand, as this is his first appearance among the much-abused class of caterers for the instruc¬ tion of the public. The Author must further observe, that for many of the physio¬ logical observations contained in the First Lecture, he is indebted to some manuscript notes which he took when attending the Lectures of Professor Alison, at the University of Edinburgh; and that many of the facts which he has mentioned in the Second Lecture, have been derived from the celebrated works of the distinguished Richard of Paris: nor have few of the ideas, which he has embodied in these Lectures, been derived from the valuable instructions of Professor Graham, of Edinburgh. It seems unnecessary to add, that the great mass of facts adduced