PREFACE 
When I was a boy on the farm, we used to thrash 
our grain with the hand-flail. Our custom was to 
thrash a flooring of sheaves on one side, then turn 
the sheaves over and thrash them on the other, 
then unbind them and thrash the loosened straw 
again, and then finish by turning the whole over 
and thrashing it once more. I suspect my reader 
will feel that I have followed the same method in 
many of these papers. I have thrashed the same 
straw several times, but I have turned it each time, 
and IJ trust have been rewarded by a few additional 
grains of truth. 
Let me hope that the result of the discussion or 
thrashing will not be to make the reader love the 
animals less, but rather to love the truth more. 
June, 1905, 
