Even so, because of the presentation format, the collection consumes 10 pages. One could easily present the same information in half the space. Despite this lavish use of space, I didn't find Quigley's examples particularly enlightening. The overall effect was generally a sense of fragmentation. The problem, I think, isn't that there are too many examples, but that there is too little teaching and too little craft in the writing.
Effective teaching helps the student understand why as well as what .
Examples are powerful teaching aids when they are pressed into the service of these goals. Progressive sequences are a great way of showing how complex structures are related to simpler bases. Subtly different examples are a great way to build the student's ability to discriminate among similar things. But it's the teacher's job to call attention to the role of the example. I can imagine this book being very successful in a class where the teacher supplies these kinds of connections, but it seems to me that Quigley seldom reaches for this objective in the book.