PREFACE Vll 



him combine, with all the varied ideas and experiences 

 of a man who has traversed the round globe, the 

 special knowledge of the director of a zoological 

 garden, and also that of him who has penetrated the 

 life-secrets of the forest, and who can, moreover, take 

 the point of view of the student of aesthetics. If these 

 are the qualifications for the special investigation of 

 animal play, they are not less called for in the other 

 realms of Comparative Psychology. 



While the present writer can lay claim to no such 

 roundness of culture, he thinks he can confidently 

 assert that nothing will be found in the following pages 

 that has not some basis in his own observations or 

 experience. 



The Author has on more than one occasion expressed 

 his belief that mere closet psychology is of little 

 value in advancing the subject as applied to animals. 

 Accordingly, it will be found that by far the. greater 

 part of this book is made up of the facts of observation. 



In determining the form the work should take, I 

 had to consider whether to re-cast all the material I 

 had been accumulating for the last fifteen years, or 

 republish what had already appeared in an almost 

 unaltered form. It seemed to me that in the end the 

 advancement of the subject would be best served by 

 the latter course. While there may be some repetition 

 in the papers that constitute the first part of the work, 

 this will serve to emphasise the views that have been 

 impressed more and more on one who has for ten years 

 been in daily intimate association with animals, and a 



