PREFACE. 7 



cleared our sky. The real secret of the astounding suc- 

 cess of modern science and industry is a general renais- 

 sance of naturalism, and the same revival begins to 

 manifest its influence in the tendencies of modern lit- 

 erature. Ghost-stories are going out of fashion. Like 

 scrofula and other bequests of the Middle Ages, the 

 sickly pessimism of the sentimental school is yielding 

 to the influence of a revived taste for the pleasures 

 of out-door life. Books of travel, of sports and adven- 

 ture, historical, zoological, and even biological and cos- 

 mological studies, are fast superseding the historical 

 romances of the last generation. Even the Pariahs of 

 our reading-rooms have advanced from ghost-hunts to 

 scalp-hunts, from impossibilities to improbabilities. And, 

 moreover, the progress of natural science tends to super- 

 sede fiction by making it superfluous even for romantic 

 purposes. There is more romance in the travels of 

 Humboldt, more magic in the idyls of Thoreau and the 

 revelations of Darwin and Haeckel, than in all the fan- 

 cies of the mediaeval miracle-mongers. The wonders of 

 nature begin to eclipse the wonders of supernaturalism. 

 A Zoological Garden attracts more sight-seers than the 

 best Passion-play. Pan has revived. 



The plan of the present volume is modest enough : 

 its theories are mere suggestions ; its limits have often 

 obliged me to reduce a chapter of zoological adventures 

 to a page of zoological anecdotes. But in offering it as a 

 contribution to the entertaining literature of the English 



