Manual of the Infusoria - Including a Description of All Known, Flagellate, Ciliate, and Tentaculiferous Protozoa, British and Foreign, and an Account of the Organization and Affinities of the Sponges #264499

IT is now some ten years since the author, then but a recruit in the ranks of practical microscopists, elected to concentrate his attention upon the group of organisms that form the subject of this treatise. At a very early period of his investigations, formidable obstructions to substantial progress in the course mapped out, presented themselves in connection not only with the very backward condition of the literature of this country relating to this topic, but by reason also of the exceedingly wide and scattered area of Continental bibliography that had to be explored and sifted before it was possible to arrive at any adequate idea of the state of contemporary knowledge concerning almost any given type that might be the subject of examination. It was the recognition of, and continual contact with these difficulties that suggested to the author the advantages that would accrue both to himself and all English-speaking microscopists, from the compilation of a treatise, brought up to date, that should contain a concise description of the innumerable species known to science whose descriptions were dis tributed throughout many scattered sources, and that led to the efforts, now carried into execution, to supply this desideratum.