INTRODUCTION 



LIVING things form an inexhaustible field of in- 

 terest and delight to Man, who is the outcome 

 of an age-long process which has culminated 

 in the production of the human mind with its unique 

 powers of thought. This process has left, as it were, on 

 the way to man, all the varied crowd of lower animals 

 and plants which still survive to tell him whence he has 

 come, and to enable him to arrive at an understand- 

 ing of the secrets of his own nature. No wonder that 

 natural history, the knowledge of animals, plants and 

 stones, has from the earliest times been a serious pursuit, 

 and perhaps we ought not to be astonished when the 

 intimate and deep-seated relations of man with other 

 living things is borne in mind, that the most fantastic 

 beliefs about natural history have been current, and that 

 it took a longer time to enable men to investigate 

 animals without prejudice and the domination of childish 

 and preposterous imaginings than it did to start a 

 reasonable examination of less elusive and exciting 

 things, such as plants and the non-living objects of 

 which our senses give us cognisance. 



The study of animals can never lose its special hold 

 on the human mind, due to the animal's direct appeal to 

 man, its saying, as it were, " You are one of us, you 

 know. We are close to you — -very close to you : if 

 you can understand my nature, my mechanism and 



