INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. XXvii 



interest, to the nature of animal life, but they lead us to face one 

 of the ultimate problems of biology the evolution of faunas. 



II. 



Alfred Edmund Brehm (1829-1884) was born at Unter-Renthen- 

 dorf in Sachsen- Weimar, where his father an accomplished orni- 

 thologist was pastor. Brought up among birds, learning to watch 

 from his earliest boyhood, accompanying his father in rambles 

 through the Thuringian forest, questioning and being questioned 

 about all the sights and sounds of the woods, listening to the 

 experts who came to see the famous collection in the Pfarr-haus, 

 and to argue over questions of species with the kindly pastor, young 

 Brehm was almost bound to become a naturalist. And while the 

 father stuffed his birds in the evenings the mother read aloud from 

 Goethe and Schiller, and her poetic feeling was echoed in her son. 

 Yet, so crooked are life's ways, the youth became an architect's 

 apprentice, and acted as such for four years! 



But an opportunity presented itself which called him, doubtless 

 most willing, from the desk and workshop. Baron John Wilhelm 

 von Miiller, a keen sportsman and lover of birds, sought an assistant 

 to accompany him on an ornithological expedition to Africa, and 

 with him the youth, not yet out of his teens, set forth in 1847. It 

 was a great opportunity, but the price paid for it was heavy, for 

 Brehm did not see his home again for full five years, and was forced 

 to bear strains, to incur responsibilities, and to suffer privations, 

 which left their mark on him for life. Only those who know the 

 story of his African journeys, and what African travel may be 

 with repeated fevers and inconsiderately crippled resources, can 

 adequately appreciate the restraint which Brehm displays in those 

 popular lectures, here translated, where there is so much of every- 

 thing but himself. 



After he returned, in 1852, rich in spoils and experience, if 

 otherwise poor, he spent several sessions at the universities of Jena 

 and Vienna. Though earnestly busy in equipping himself for further 

 work, he was not too old to enjoy the pleasures of a student life. 



