AUTHENTICITY OF ANECDOTES. 19 



petency, and to disregard all anecdotes that have been trans- 

 mitted, sometimes in many versions, from classical or me- 

 diaeval times. Many of the anecdotes on which I have 

 based my own conclusions regarding the mental status of 

 animals were described to me by eye-witnesses of the inci- 

 dents, in the truthfulness of which witnesses I could put 

 implicit trust. 



On the other hand, in the Bibliography will be found 

 the names and characters of works and authors from whom 

 much of my material for generalisation has been drawn. 

 For all incidents that are not of the most ordinary kind, 

 capable of observation by anybody and anywhere, as well 

 as for all conclusions at variance with my own, I cite the 

 name of my authority. 



The authentication of anecdotes that are not of the most 

 ordinary kind, the proof of the truth of the incidents their 

 observers describe, the determination of the accuracy of their 

 narrators, is always desirable and generally practicable. I 

 have therefore been at considerable pains, when the possible 

 or probable result promised to be worth the effort, to ascer- 

 tain whether certain statements illustrative, for instance, 

 of animal sagacity or ingenuity made by anonymous writers 

 in books, magazines, or newspapers, were correct representa- 

 tions of actual facts. 1 



I have repeatedly applied or appealed to editors or pub- 

 lishers, sometimes with a satisfactory, at other times with 

 a reverse, result. That is to say, that on the one hand 

 either the said editors or publishers assured me of the veracity 

 and bona fides of their contributors or authors, giving me 

 their names and addresses, or these contributors or authors 

 themselves have in writing acknowledged their authorship of 

 the anecdotes which formed the subject of enquiry, and 

 vouched for the reality of all the facts as narrated, gene- 

 rally as having been observed by themselves. 



In other cases editors or publishers have frankly admitted 

 that their contributors were not men of any weight, scientific 

 or literary not persons to be trusted ; in short, that they 



1 Specimens of these enquiries and their results are given in a series of 

 papers mentioned m the Bibliography. 



c 2 



