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TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE. Council is in no degree responsible for its tardy appearance; when, nearly three years since, the Council did me the honour to accept an offer on my part to present to the Society a translation of Professor Schwann’s treatise, I fully hoped to have proceeded with so pleasing a labour without interruption or hinderance; but various unforeseen circumstances, both of a professional and domestic nature, have occurred to prevent the accomplishment of my object until the present moment.

I am greatly indebted to the Author for the labour which he has expended in revising his work for this translation. Amongst the most important advantages which this edition has derived from his revision, I may mention the addition of many notes illustrative of the text, and the amalgamation of the two papers on Cartilage and Ossification, which, as they were originally written and printed at a considerable interval of time, led to some difficulty in the comprehension of the Author’s precise views on that subject; and that circumstance is also to be received as explanatory of the appearance of some of the delineations of Cartilage in Plate III. It was originally intended to have added notes, which should bring down the history of the subject to the period of publication, but it was found that they would form a mass of material almost as large as the original text, and the idea was therefore abandoned.

In order that the reader might be in possession of the whole of the evidence upon which the Cell-Theory was originally based, I have appended a translation of Dr. SCHLEIDEN's Monograph so frequently referred to by our Author.