Principles of Animal Biology

Abstract

PROF. SHULL'S book is deservedly popular in the United States, and has passed through three editions since it first appeared in 1920. The present (fourth) edition has been thoroughly revised and contains up-to-date material upon which an interesting and instructive introductory course of zoology might very well be built. The content of the subject of zoology has undergone great changes during the last twenty years or so, and it no longer consists largely of studies of structure, a hunt for anatomical comparisons and the making of new species. It is rather the study of function and behaviour which is the present growing point of the subject. The science has in fact become very largely experimental, and in the teaching of zoology changes in the content of courses and in the method of presenting the material have been gradually appearing. In the United States these changes seem to have taken place more rapidly than in Great Britain, and Prof. ShulPs book is evidently the outcome of considerable thought and teaching experience.