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Can an ant plan, a bee remember, a dog reason, a monkey deceive? Romanes spent years collecting evidence, much of it sent to him by Darwin and other naturalists, and this famous 1882 book is his answer, animal by animal. Some of his stories are astonishing, some doubtful, and he tells you which is which. If you love animals and wonder what goes on inside their heads, start here.
George John Romanes (1848 to 1894) was the biologist Darwin trusted most among the younger generation, a friend and correspondent who turned after Darwin's death to the question his master had opened: how far does mind extend through the animal kingdom? For this book he collected observations from every quarter, testing travellers' tales and keepers' stories against the principles his introduction lays down, that we know another mind only by analogy with our own.
The survey climbs the scale of life. After the lowest animals and the mollusca come the great insect chapters, ants above all, in nearly a third of the book, then bees and wasps, termites, spiders, fish, reptiles, and an enormous chapter on birds. Mammals follow, with special chapters on rodents, the elephant, the cat, the dog, and finally monkeys, apes, and baboons, where the argument reaches its climax.
Published in 1882 as Volume XLIV of the International Scientific Series, the book founded comparative psychology and was argued about for decades. This text follows the Appleton printing of 1884 and is complete: note, preface, introduction, and all seventeen chapters. The collected footnotes and the index were dropped as apparatus.
George John Romanes, Darwin's young friend and disciple, gathered in this 1882 volume of the International Scientific Series everything then known about the minds of animals, from jellyfish and ants to apes. Anecdotes sent by correspondents, Darwin among them, are tested against careful principles set out in his introduction. The result founded the serious study of animal intelligence, and its stories still delight and provoke argument.
The book opens with a short author's note, unusual and candid: Romanes has learned that Sir John Lubbock will publish on ants and bees in the same series, and explains why, after consulting Lubbock and the publishers, he keeps his own chapters on those insects, so that this volume remains a complete resume of its subject. His preface follows, and then the introduction, the book's intellectual foundation, which asks how we can know that animals have minds at all and lays down the method of inference from our own experience. The seventeen chapters then ascend the animal scale in the order of the contents. The first applies the principles to the lowest animals, where mind barely stirs; mollusca follow, and then the insect world in depth, ants in five reader parts, bees and wasps, termites, spiders and scorpions, and the remaining articulata. Fish, batrachians and reptiles, and a great three part chapter on birds carry the survey through the lower vertebrates. The mammals close the book, first generally, then in special chapters on rodents, the elephant, the cat, the dog, and, at the summit, monkeys, apes, and baboons. The text is complete; the series catalogue, the footnote dumps, and the index were dropped.
Edition: Edition of 1884. Text: Project Gutenberg ebook 40459.
The first chapter
I HAVE recently learnt from the publishers of the 'International Scientific Series' that they have made arrangements with Sir John Lubbock to bring out in the same series a work of his on Ants and Bees. Necessarily, therefore, the material to be dealt with in his work will to a large extent overlap that which is presented by my chapters on the same insects; but after consulting with the publishers, and also with Sir John Lubbock, it has seemed to me undesirable to omit these chapters on account of the circumstances here stated. For, on the one hand, the facts will not lose their value from being twice told; and on the other, it is desirable that the present member of the Series should form in itself, so far as its Author can make it, a complete résumé_ of all the more important facts of Animal Intelligence.
Source: Project Gutenberg. Published 1882. Author died 1894. Public domain worldwide. Share this book: WhatsApp
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