From Falstaff to the Ring of the Nibelungen, great constructions and great works of art have paid a price for amplitude beyond usual standards. D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson (1860–1948), Professor of Zoology at Scotland's University of St. Andrews, and perhaps the greatest polymath of our century, was scarcely homo unius libri (a man of one book). He composed two volumes of commentaries on all birds and fishes mentioned in classic Greek texts; he prepared the standard translation of Aristotle's Historia animalium; he labored for years over statistics for the Fishery Board of Scotland; and he wrote the section on pycnogonids (a small but fascinating group of arthropods) for the Cambridge Natural History series. But his enduring (indeed evergrowing) fame rests upon a glorious (and very long) book that served more as the active project of a lifetime than a stage of ontogeny—On Growth and Form (first edition of 793 pages in 1917, second edition enlarged to 1116 pages in 1942).

Much as it must pain any scholar and publisher of integrity to abridge such a work (for such an act does resemble the dissection of a body), one must not, as Jesus told us, light a candle and then place it invisibly under a bushel (Matthew 5:14–17). On Growth and Form is one of the great lights of science (and of English prose); it must be available at an affordable price and a totable heft: “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works.”