PREFACE. 



Philip Gilbert Hamerton, an art critic of keen insight 

 and wide reputation, whose writings are remarkable for 

 their attractive style, was born in 1834 and died in 1894. 

 The greater portion of his life was spent in France ; the 

 rest of it chiefly in one of the wildest and most beautiful 

 parts of Scotland, where he lived as much as possible 

 among his friends, the animals. His wife says that "he 

 never could be without a dog," and the following words, 

 in which he prefaces the book ("Chapters on Animals," 

 London, 1874) from which these pages are taken, together 

 with the chapters themselves, will show what a warm 

 lover and kind-hearted master animals had in him. 



" Having been in the habit of loving and observing 

 animals, as people do who live much in the country, I 

 thought that possibly some of my observations, however 

 trifling in themselves, might interest others whose tastes 

 are similar to my own. In this spirit I wrote these chap- 

 ters, describing what I had seen rather than what other 

 writers had recorded." 



The pages here given cannot fail to interest readers of 

 every age. They should, moreover, be in a high degree 

 educative to children, and it is with this object in view that 

 the selection has been made. 



