BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Brehm’s Thierleben is the great repository of facts concerning the social lives of the higher animals. The third edition, in ten large volumes, fully illustrated, and edited by Pechuel Lösche, has lately appeared (Leipzig und Wien, Bibliog. Institute, 1890-92). It is, indeed, as Virchow has lately termed it, “a sort of zoological library,” popular in character, and almost purely descriptive. (There is a French edition of this work in nine volumes, but, with the exception of one fragment, it has not appeared in English. The nearest approach to Brehm’s work in England is Cassell’s New Natural History, and in America the Riverside Natural History.) It is impossible to enumerate the numberless works by travellers and others on which the knowledge of animal industries is founded. The works of Huber, Fabre, Audubon, Le Vaillant, C. St. John, Belt, Bates, Tennent, are frequently quoted in the course of this work. Many of the most important and detailed studies of animal industries are scattered through the pages of the scientific periodicals of all countries. References to a few of the chief of these studies will be found in the text.
For a scientific discussion of the phenomena of animal skill and intelligence we may perhaps best turn to Professor C. Lloyd Morgan, whose work is always both acute and cautious. In Animal Life and Intelligence (1890) he has furnished an excellent introduction to the subject. In his Introduction to Comparative Psychology (shortly to appear in the Contemporary Science Series) he discusses the fundamental problems of mental processes in animals, and the transition from animal intelligence to human intelligence. Romanes’ Mental Evolution in Animals (1883) and other works by this writer, dealing with the same subject, but proceeding on a different method, should also be studied; and his Animal Intelligence (International Science Series) is an excellent critical summary of the facts. Büchner’s Aus dem Geistesleben der Thiere (Berlin, 1877) and Houzeau’s Facultés Mentales des Animaux (Brussels, 1877) may also be mentioned, and Espinas’ Sociétés Animales (1877), though dealing primarily with sociology, is an original and suggestive study of great value.
As a general introduction, of a popular but not unscientific character, to all the various aspects of animal life, J. Arthur Thomson’s little book, The Study of Animal Life (University Extension Manuals, 1892), may be recommended. At the end of Mr. Thomson’s volume will be found a useful classified list of the “Best Books” on animal life.