The volume of which the following pages are a translation, has been
adopted by the _University Commission at Paris_ among their prize
books, and has reached an eighth edition. Perhaps these facts speak
sufficiently in its favor; but as translator, and to some extent editor,
I wish to add my testimony to the great charm as well as merit of the
little work. I sat down to it, I must own, with no special predilection
in favor of the subject as a suitable one for young people; but in the
course of the labor have become a thorough convert to the author's
views that such a study--perhaps I ought to add, so pursued as he has
enabled it to be--is likely to prove a most useful and most desirable
one.
The precise age at which the interest of a young mind can be turned
towards this practical branch of natural history is an open question,
and not worth disputing about. It may vary even in different
individuals. The letters are addressed to a _child_--in the original
even to a _little girl_--and most undoubtedly, as the book stands, it is
fit for any child's perusal who can find amusement in its pages: while
to the rather older readers, of whom I trust there will be a great many,
I will venture to say that the advantage they will gain in the subject
having been so treated as to be brought within the comprehension and
adapted to the tastes of a child, is pretty nearly incalculable. The
quaintness and drollery of the illustrations with which difficult
scientific facts are set forth will provoke many a smile, no doubt, and
in some young people perhaps a tendency to feel themselves treated
_babyishly_; but if in the course of the babyish treatment they find
themselves almost unexpectedly becoming masters of an amount of valuable
information on very difficult subjects, they will have nothing to
complain of. Let such young readers refer to even a popular
Encyclopaedia for an insight into any of the subjects of the
twenty-eight chapters of this volume--"The Heart," "The Lungs," "The
Stomach," "Atmospheric Pressure,"--no matter which, and see how much
they can understand of it without an amount of preliminary instruction
which would require half-a-year's study, and they will then thoroughly
appreciate the quite marvellous ingenuity and beautiful skill with
which M. Macé has brought the great leading anatomical and physical
facts of life out of the depths of scientific learning, and made them
literally comprehensible by a child.
* * * * *
There is one point (independent of the scientific teaching) and that,
happily, the only really important one, in which the English translator
has had no change to make or desire. The religious teaching of the
book is unexceptionable. There is no strained introduction of the
subject, but there is throughout the volume an acknowledgment of the
Great Creator of this marvellous work of the human frame, of the daily
and hourly gratitude we owe to Him, and of the utter impossibility of
our tracing out half his wonders, even in the things nearest to our
senses, and most constantly subject to observation. M. Macé will help,
and not hinder the humility with which the Christian naturalist lifts
one veil only to recognise another beyond.
It will be satisfactory to any one who may be inclined to wonder how
a lady can feel sure of having correctly translated the various
scientific and anatomical statements contained in the volume, to know
that the whole has been submitted to the careful revision of a medical
friend, to whom I have reason to be very grateful for valuable
explanations and corrections whenever they were necessary. In the same
way the chapter on "Atmospheric Pressure," where, owing to the
difference between French and English weights and measures, several
alterations of illustrations, etc., had to be made, has received similar
kind offices from the hands of a competent mathematician.
* * * * *