INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. XXIX 



For these notes I am indebted to a delightful appreciation of 

 Brehm which Ernest Krause has written in introduction to the third 

 edition of the Tierleben, edited by Pechuel-Loesche, and as regards 

 the naturalist's character I can only refer to that essay. As to his 

 published work, however, every naturalist knows at least the 

 Tierleben, and on that a judgment may be safely based. It is a 

 monumental work on the habits of animals, founded in great part 

 on personal observation, which was always keen and yet sympa- 

 thetic. It is a classic on the natural history of animals, and readers 

 of Darwin will remember how the master honoured it. 



Doubtless Brehm had the defects of his qualities. He was, it is 

 said, too generous to animals, and sometimes read the man into the 

 beast unwarrantably. But that is an anthropomorphism which 

 easily besets the sympathetic naturalist. He was sometimes extra- 

 vagant and occasionally credulous. He did not exactly grip some 

 of the subjects he tackled, such as, if I must specify, what he calls 

 " the monkey-question ". 



It is frankly allowed that he was no modem biologist, erudite as 

 regards evolution-factors, nor did he profess to attempt what is 

 called zoological analysis, and what is often mere necrology, but his 

 merit is that he had seen more than most of us, and had seen, 

 above all, the naturalist's supreme vision — the vibrating web of life. 

 And he would have us see it also. 



m. 



The success of the pictures which Brehm has given us — of bird- 

 bergs and tundra, of steppes and desert, of river fauna and tropical 

 forest — ^raises the wish that they had been complete enough to 

 embrace the whole world. As this ideal, so desirable both from an 

 educational and an artistic standpoint, has not been realized by any 

 one volume, we have ventured to insert here a list of some more 

 or less analogous English works by naturalist-travellers, sportsmen, 

 and others — 



Adams, A. Leith. N'otes of a Naturalist in the Nile Valley and Malta (Edin- 

 burgh, 1870). 

 Agassiz, A. Three Cruises of the "Blake" (Boston and New York, 1888). 



