The Project Gutenberg eBook, Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata, by H. G. Wells

Title: Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata

Author: H. G. Wells

Release Date: June 8, 2007 [eBook #21781]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TEXT BOOK OF BIOLOGY, PART 1: VERTEBRATA***

E-text prepared by "Teary Eyes" Anderson
and Dedicated To Destanie;
With Hopes Her Dream of Becoming A veterinarian Comes True

Special Thanks to Deborah Furness of the University College London for her help, and research, in learning about this book, and helping me understand it better. Spell-checked with www.thesolutioncafe.com


Transcriber's Note:

I try to edit my e-texts so they can easily be used with voice speech programs, I believe blind people and children should also be able to enjoy the many books now available electronically. I use the -- for an em-dash, with a space either before or after it depending on its usage. This helps to keep certain programs from squishing the words together, such as down-stairs. Also to help voice speech programs I've enclosed upper case text between - and _ (-UPPER CASE TEXT_), and used underscores to show chapter and section headers. I also added a second contents that shows the other sections of this e-text. This e-text was made with a "Top can" text scanner, with a bit of correcting here and there.

This book is volume one of two. It was later reworked by A. M. Davies in 1898 under the title "Text-book of Zoology", then revised and rewritten by J. T. Cunningham about 1909 and W. H. Leigh-Sharpe around 1932. Although these editions gave Wells the main credit, most of Wells' writing and all his drawings were removed; only his rough outline seems to have been used. It was re-published by University Tutorial Press.

The First Edition, as well as The Second and Revised Edition (with dissections redrawn by Miss A. C. Robbins) are used in this e-text. The First Edition had some small minor errors, as well as dissection abbreviations that are shown on the Dissection Sheets, but no mention of them was listed in the text. Certain figures on the Dissections Sheets are missing (such as Figures 1, 2, 4, with no mention to a 3, as if Mr. Wells drew a Figure 3 but found it was not needed and removed it from the book). Rather then leaving it as is, I put {} marks around my notes saying things like {No Figure 3}. For the "Second and Revised Edition" Wells was able to change some of these errors and missing parts, but many of the same printing tablets were used and with almost each addition other things were removed, (in one instance one entire section from a chapter), and many of the helpful suggestions were shortened or removed so other things could be explained more. In an ideal version of the book both could have been used, but with reprinting the entire book from the first to the second editions almost as many things were lost as were gained, so I've tried to indicate where both text go separate paths with the following;

[Second Edition only text] and -First Edition only text,- and also
{Lines from Second Edition only.} and {Lines from First Edition only.}

where more than just a sentence is added or removed. Other things to notice is how some words are spelt or punctuated differently throughout the book, such as;

Blood Vessels
Blood-Vessels
Bloodvessels

I've tried to keep these as close to the original book as possible.