Primitive man dominated the living things around him, but he did not understand them, nor did he recognize any connection between him and them. As time passed, however, gifted men of different races took animals and plants as models for designs in painting and weaving. Thus, in an old Egyptian papyrus, ducks may be seen swimming among the reeds at the edge of the Nile.

It is said that the Greeks, with their boundless curiosity and zest for living, were the first to become interested scientifically with living things. Since then, men have devoted their entire lives to unveiling the mystery of life.

Such a man was Aristotle, who, over two thousand years ago, studied the breeding habits of the catfish at the stern of a small boat off the coast of Lesbos. 

Charles Darwin was another: his father feared that he would become "nothing but an idle sportsman," but, in 1859, he published his famous book The Origin of Species. In it, he had worked out the theory of organic evolution.

From the grandstand of Men, Microscopes, and Living Things, the lives and works of the great biologists pass in review before the reader. And when the parade is over, he learns that we are still at the beginning of understanding, that there are many things in the living world that cannot yet be explained.

Anthony Ravielli, who was at one time a portrait painter and is the author-illustrator of Wonders of the Human Body, has enhanced the book with a set of handsome drawings in line.

From the dust jacket