PREFACE. TO THE FIRST EDITION. 



IF the author of this book had had to choose a title for it 

 after it was written he would have called it "A Romance 

 of the Animal World." For the contents both seem and 

 are romantic and wonderful, although with the exception 

 of such doubtful or possibly doubtful observations as are 

 given on the authority of the writer himself there is 

 nothing therein which does not rest on scientific investi- 

 gation or on the evidence of trustworthy observers, who, at 

 different times and in different places, have had co-incident 

 experiences, and whose accounts bear the stamp of sober 

 research, and are the simple description of things they actually 

 saw. But as histories (of nations as of individuals), related 

 just as they really happened and still are daily happening, 

 are full of more wonderful and more startling occurrences, 

 of grander tragedy and more irresistible comedy, of more 

 apparently impossible and incredible things and events 

 than are told in fiction, and leave far behind them the 

 boldest fancies of poets and novelists, so it is also with 

 nature; she is wont, the more we peer into her secrets, to 

 bring the most marvellous, the mightiest and the most 

 astonishing forms out of the simplest and the least differen- 

 tiated. That " Mind in Animals " especially is in reality a 

 far other, higher and more complex thing than had hitherto 

 been generally conceived, and indeed than the ruling schools 



