First course in biology — Text and Context

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In Category - Historical Textbooks

Authors: Bailey, L. H. (Liberty Hyde), 1858-1954, Coleman, Walter Moore, 1863-1926 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2025 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Biology -- Textbooks; Biology -- Laboratory manuals Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 166,760

Reading time 726 min

Text sections 62

The catalog record for First course in biology — Text and Context provides practical reading context through 166,760 words, 12 hr 6 min estimated reading time, and 62 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 13.5 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Biology -- Textbooks,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #76851

This 1908 textbook integrates plant, animal, and human biology into a single course, emphasizing observation and hands-on study. The authors' preface argues against isolated lab work, urging instead that pupils learn from living organisms and everyday surroundings. Excerpts reveal a direct, questioning style that prompts readers to touch, watch, and compare specimens like snails and fish.

Editorial Edition Score 4.9/5

★★★★★ ★★★★★

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Description quality20 pts
Title & short description10 pts
Source metadata20 pts
Text length15 pts
Chapters / structure15 pts
EPUB file integrity20 pts

Total of 100 points, scaled to a 2.5-5.0 range. Editions with an empty description or a missing EPUB file are not scored.

Edition quality

File: pg76851

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I. NO TWO PLANTS OR PARTS ARE ALIKE P 1

II. THE STRUGGLE TO LIVE P 4

III. SURVIVAL OF THE FIT P 7

IV. PLANT SOCIETIES P 9

V. THE PLANT BODY P 15

VI. SEEDS AND GERMINATION P 20

VII. THE ROOT--THE FORMS OF ROOTS P 32

VIII. THE ROOT--FUNCTION AND STRUCTURE P 38

IX. THE STEM--KINDS AND FORMS--PRUNING P 49

X. THE STEM--ITS GENERAL STRUCTURE P 59

XI. LEAVES--FORM AND POSITION P 73

XII. LEAVES--STRUCTURE AND ANATOMY P 86

XIII. LEAVES--FUNCTION OR WORK P 92

XIV. DEPENDENT PLANTS P 106

XV. WINTER AND DORMANT BUDS P 111

XVI. BUD PROPAGATION P 121

XVII. HOW PLANTS CLIMB P 129

XVIII. THE FLOWER--ITS PARTS AND FORMS P 133

XIX. THE FLOWER--FERTILIZATION AND POLLINATION P 144

XX. FLOWER-CLUSTERS P 155

XXII. DISPERSAL OF SEEDS P 172

XIII. PHENOGAMS AND CRYPTOGAMS P 176

XXIV. STUDIES IN CRYPTOGAMS P 182

PART II. ANIMAL BIOLOGY

VII. CRUSTACEANS A 51

XI. BATRACHIANS A 126

PART III. HUMAN BIOLOGY

II. THE SKIN AND KIDNEYS H 16

III. THE SKELETON H 28

V. THE CIRCULATION H 51

VI. THE RESPIRATION H 70

VII. FOOD AND DIGESTION H 89

VIII. THE NERVOUS SYSTEM H 117

X. BACTERIA AND SANITATION H 158

=PRELIMINARY EXPERIMENTS=

These experiments are inserted for those pupils who have not had instruction in chemistry and physics, to give them a point of view on the subjects that follow. At least a general understanding of some of these subjects is necessary to a satisfactory elementary study of biology.

=Elements and Compounds.=--The material world is made up of elements and compounds. An _element_ is a substance that cannot be separated into two or more substances. A _compound_ is formed by the union of two or more elements. All the material or substance of which the earth and its inhabitants is composed is formed of the chemical elements; this substance taken all together is known as _matter_.

_Carbon_ and _iron_ are examples of elements. Compare a bit of charcoal, which is one form of carbon, with a new iron nail. Which is brighter? Heavier for its size? Tougher? More brittle? Harder? More readily combustible? Resistant to change when left exposed to air and dampness? There are two other forms of carbon: graphite or black lead (used in pencils and stove polish); and diamond, which occurs in crystals and is the hardest known substance. Iron does not have varied forms like carbon. _Sulfur_ is another element. What is its color? Has it odor? Taste? Will it dissolve in water? Is it heavy or light? Will it burn? What is the color of the flame? Of the fumes? _Phosphorus_, another element, burns so readily that it ignites by friction and is used in matches. Rub the tip of a match with the finger. What is the odor of phosphorus? Phosphorus exists in nature only in combination with other elements. Lead, tin, silver, gold, copper, zinc, nickel, platinum, are elements.

There are less than eighty known elements; but the compounds formed of them are innumerable. Carbon is found in all substances formed by the growth of living things. That there is carbon in sugar, for example, can easily be shown by charring it on a hot shovel or a stove until its water is driven off and only charcoal is left. Part of the starch in a biscuit remains as charcoal when it has been half burned.

=Oxygen and the Air.=--The great activity of pure oxygen in attacking other substances can be shown by passing into a fruit-jar a lighted splinter, a piece of lighted magnesium ribbon, an old watch spring (or a bit of picture wire), the end of which has been dipped in sulfur and lighted. About one fifth of the air is oxygen and about four fifths is _nitrogen_ and other inactive gases. Pure nitrogen will quickly extinguish a lighted splinter thrust into it. It is the oxygen in the air that supports all forms of burning. Less than one half of one per cent of the air is an inactive gas called carbon dioxid, a compound of carbon and oxygen. It is formed not only when wood or coal is burned, but also by the life processes of animals and plants.

=Favorable and Unfavorable Conditions for Evaporation.=--Pour the same quantity of water (half a glassful) into three saucers and two bottles. Place one saucer near a hot stove; place the other two in a cool place, having first covered one of them with a dish. Place one of the bottles by the stove and the other by the remaining saucers. After some hours, examine the saucers and bottles and compare and record the results. Explain. State three conditions that are favorable to evaporation. State three ways in which evaporation may be prevented or decreased.

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The preface to First Course in Biology announces a deliberate break from the era's formal, college-style laboratory method. Authors L. H. Bailey and Walter M. Coleman assert that studying botany without knowing plants, or physiology without knowing oneself, may be less valuable than learning a trade. Their solution is a unit course that treats plants, animals, and humans as connected expressions of life, not separate subjects. The book's structure—three parts covering plant, animal, and human biology—reflects this unified aim, and the excerpts show a consistent pedagogical voice: direct, observational, and grounded in the common surroundings of the pupil.

A Pedagogy of Direct Observation

The authors' instructional method emerges clearly in the mollusk chapter. Students are told to touch the tentacles of a snail, to note whether the respiratory opening is on the right or left side, and to place the snail in a moist tumbler to observe creeping. The questions are concrete: Does the whole under surface seem to be used in creeping? Does the creeping surface change shape? This is not passive reading; it is a script for hands-on investigation. The text repeatedly asks What happens? and How often does the aperture open and close?—phrasing that trains the eye to attend to process and change. The authors avoid abstract definitions until after the student has looked, touched, and wondered.

Diction That Bridges the Familiar and the Strange

Bailey and Coleman choose words that make unfamiliar organisms approachable. The squid's ink is called sepia, a term that links the animal to artists' pigment. The octopus is called devilfish, a common name that acknowledges folklore while the text calmly describes its anatomy. The pearly nautilus and paper argonaut are introduced with their scientific names but also with the phrase examples of cephalopods that have shells, grounding them in a category the student can grasp. The authors do not shy from vivid detail: the squid's large and staring eyes add to the uncanny, terrifying appearance. Yet the tone remains matter-of-fact, as if the student is simply being told what any careful observer would see.

Structure as a Tool for Comparison

The book's organization reinforces its comparative approach. After separate treatments of grasshopper, spider, crayfish, centipede, and mussel, a Comparative Review table asks students to compare bilateral or radiate symmetry, appendages for locomotion, body divisions, and breathing organs. This table is not a summary but a prompt: the student must fill an entire notebook page. The same comparative logic appears in the mollusk chapter, where the three classes—pelecypoda, gastropoda, cephalopoda—are each exemplified and then contrasted in a Comparison of Mollusks chart. The authors expect the pupil to see relationships, not just memorize facts.

The Human Biology Section as a Coda

Part III, on human biology, is not excerpted here, but its presence in a single volume with plant and animal biology is itself a statement. The preface argues that education should put the pupil into touch with the living knowledge and the affairs of his time. Including human biology in the same course as botany and zoology implies that the human body is not a separate mystery but one more organism to be studied through observation and comparison. The book's final chapters likely extend the same questioning, hands-on method to the student's own physiology, completing the arc from the snail in the tumbler to the pupil's own breathing and heartbeat.

Readers approaching this textbook today will find a document of educational history as much as a science primer. The authors' insistence on direct contact with living things—on touching the snail, watching the fish, preparing a skeleton with ants—offers a model of active learning that contrasts with screen-based instruction. The book rewards those who read it as a script for doing, not just for knowing. Its questions are still answerable, its comparisons still instructive, and its voice still direct.

This old textbook’s gentle insistence on watching a living snail rather than dissecting one brought back my own schoolroom window sill, where I once kept a jar of pond water. I felt the same quiet patience in Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader — Reading Notes, where language, too, waits to be touched through slow repetition, not forced. Both simply ask for attention.