2 Preface. 



by men and women who have been well informed and who have made 

 themselves fully capable of contemplating understandingly the world 

 which lies about them. 



Our libraries are to-day quite affluent in books that are the handmaids 

 of natural science. Michelet and Hugh Miller, in their day, opened 

 glorious new worlds before a rising generation, and that generation is 

 now doing excellent work under the inspiration of the impetus which 

 it then received. Tait, Balfour Stewart, Dawson, Gray, McCook, 

 Thompson, Scudder, Mrs. Treat, Olive Thorne Miller and others have 

 done much to continue the interest, pleasure and enthusiasm awakened 

 by those earlier writers, and even Darwin and Huxley themselves, in 

 detailing their experiments, have not scorned to bring their thoughts 

 within the range of narrower minds. 



But in the popularization of natural science no man has done more 

 than Rev. J. G. Wood in his numerous works. Not only have his 

 writings created in thousands a taste for nature-studies, but they have 

 been no less the means of cultivating the observation, awakening 

 enthusiasm and directing effort in the lines of original research and 

 discovery. Certainly no one, as his many writings so abundantly attest, 

 possessed a larger fund of knowledge concerning the powers and 

 capabilities of the lower animals than this author. Few knew our 

 domestic animals better than he, and none was more capable of judging 

 of the mental and moral status which they should occupy in the world 

 of animals. It is true that men and women, eminent in theology, 

 literature and science, had expressed a belief in the idea that the " latent 

 powers and capacities" of the lower animals might be developed in a 

 future life, but no one had felt secure enough in this belief to warrant 

 more than a passing thought or two upon the subject. 



Bishop Butler, in his "Analogy of Religion," undoubtedly believed 

 the lower animals capable of a future life. In speaking of them in 

 this connection in the opening of his work, he says : " It is said these 

 observations are equally applicable to brutes ; and it is thought an 

 insuperable difficulty that they should be immortal, and by consequence 

 capable of everlasting happiness. And this manner of expression is 

 both invidious and weak ; but the thing intended by it is really no diffi- 

 culty at all, either in the way of natural or moral consideration." 



