IX Anatomical Observations in Birds and Rabbits

Abstract

When I published my few observations, I had decided to lay down the anatomical knife until more convenient times and to take up again the nearly cast away geometer’s rod, so as not to appear to have wasted all time and labour if I deserted completely my research for which I spent many hours in the past and which I would have treated not as my primary, but as my unique work, if straitened circumstances at home had not so much convinced as forced me to prefer the useful to the pleasant. But hardly were my fingers, rid of blood, slightly besprinkled with this very pleasant powder that partly the fairly acid faces of famous gentlemen, partly their unfriendly writings that presented my opinion in a sense different from mine, denied me the happiness desired for a long time so that they imposed on me the necessity to answer and also to return to this bloody task.