They don't write them like they used to.

I am reading an old monograph first published in 1928. Advisor lent it to me saying that he thought I would find it interesting.

Despite the old-fashioned language, it's a pleasure to read, both because it gives me a picture of biology research in 1928, and because I see the origin of so much of research now, 80 years later.

My favorite bit comes at the end of a paragraph in which the author brings together data from disparate areas of the body to draw the conclusion that they operate on similar principles. He finishes,

There is nothing very startling in this conclusion, but it is satisfactory to have reached it.

You don't often see that kind of understatement in today's hyperbolic papers, where every phenomenon is novel, and every conclusion striking and unexpected.