On Growth and Form

This Book Of Mine Has Little Need Of Preface For Indeed It Is All Preface From Beginning To End. I Have Written It As An Easy Introduction To The Study Of Organic Form By Methods Which Are The Common-Places Of Physical Science Which Are By No Means Novel In Their Application To Natural History But Which Nevertheless Naturalists Are Little Accustomed To Employ. It Is Not The Biologist With An Inkling Of Mathematics But The Skilled And Learned Mathematician Who Must Ultimately Deal With Such Problems As Are Merely Sketched And Adumbrated Here. I Pretend To No MathEMatICal Skill But I Have Made What Use I Could Of What Tools I Had; I Have Dealt With Simple Cases And The MathEMatICal Methods Which I Have Introduced Are Of The Easiest And Simplest Kind. Elementary As They Are My Book Has Not Been Written Without The HelpThe Indispensable HelpOf Many Friends. Like Mr Pope Translating Homer When I Felt Myself Deficient I Sought Assistance! And The Experience Which Johnson Attributed To Pope Has Been Mine Also That Men Of Learning Did Not Refuse To Help Me. My Debts Are Many And I Will Not Try To Proclaim Them All: But I Beg To Record My Particular Obligations To Professor Claxton Fidler Sir George Greenhill Sir Joseph Larmor And Professor A. Mckenzie; To A Much Younger But Very Helpful Friend Mr John Marshall Scholar Of Trinity; Lastly And (If I May Say So) Most Of All To My Colleague Professor William Peddie Whose Advice Has Made Many Useful Additions To My Book And Whose Criticism Has Spared Me Many A Fault And Blunder.