associated. He was aware that what he had to say was likely to
prove more interesting to future generations than to his immediate
public, "but any book that desires to see out a literary three-score
years and ten must offer something to future generations as well as
to its own." By next year one half of the three-score years and ten
will have passed, and the new generation by their constant enquiries
for the work have already begun to show their appreciation of
Butler's method of treating the subject, and their readiness to
listen to what was addressed to them as well as to their fathers.

HENRY FESTING JONES.
March, 1920.



AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION



This book, as I have said in my concluding chapter, has turned out
very different from the one I had it in my mind to write when I
began it. It arose out of a conversation with the late Mr. Alfred
Tylor soon after his paper on the growth of trees and protoplasmic
continuity was read before the Linnean Society--that is to say, in
December, 1884--and I proposed to make the theory concerning the
subdivision of organic life into animal and vegetable, which I have
broached in my concluding chapter, the main feature of the book.
One afternoon, on leaving Mr. Tylor's bedside, much touched at the
deep disappointment he evidently felt at being unable to complete
the work he had begun so ably, it occurred to me that it might be