PREFACE
TO THE GERMAN EDITION.
Six years have passed since the grave at Renthendorf closed over the remains of my esteemed father, whose death—all too early—was as great a loss to Science as to those who loved and honoured him. It was strange that his eventful and adventurous life, in the course of which he visited and explored four quarters of the globe, should have ended at the little spot in green Thuringia where he was born. He had just reached his fifty-fifth year when his lips, so apt in speech, were silenced, and the pen which he held so masterfully dropped from his hand. He was full of great plans as to various works, and it is much to be regretted that the notes which he had collected towards the realization of these were too fragmentary for anyone but their author to utilize. But the manuscripts which he left contained many a treasure, and it seemed to me a duty, both to the author and to all friends of thoughtful observation, to make these available to the reading public.
The following pages form the first book of the kind, and contain the most valuable part of the legacy—Alfred Edmund Brehm’s lectures, once so universally popular. I believe that, in giving these pages to the world, I am offering a gift which will be warmly welcomed, and I need add no commendatory words of mine, for they speak adequately for themselves. Writing replaces spoken words very imperfectly, and my father, who was never tied down to his paper, may often have delivered the same matter in different forms according to the responsiveness of his audience, abbreviating here, expanding there—yet to anyone who has heard him the following pages will recall his presence and the tones of his sonorous voice; everyone will not only recognize in them the individuality of the author of the Tierleben (Animal Life) and Bird Life, but will learn to know him in a new and attractive side of his character. For it is my father’s lectures almost more than any other of his works which show the wealth of his experiences, the many-sidedness of his knowledge, his masterly powers of observation and description, and not least his delicate kindly humour and the sympathetic interpretation of animate and inanimate nature which arose from his deeply poetic temperament.
Therefore I send these pages forth into the world with the pleasant confidence that they will add many to the author’s already numerous friends. May they also gain new and unprejudiced sympathizers for the animal world which he loved so warmly and understood so thoroughly; and may they, in every house where the love of literature, and of the beautiful is cherished, open eyes and hearts to perceive the beauty of nature, the universal mother; then will the highest and noblest aim of their author be achieved.
So may all success attend these pages, may they receive a joyful welcome, and wherever they gain an entrance may they remain as a prized possession.
HORST BREHM,
Doctor of Medicine.
Berlin, September, 1890.