Animal Intelligence

Abstract

THE psychology of animals having hitherto been treated only in detached portions, and for the most part in an uncritical manner, Dr. Romanes has “thought it desirable that there should be something resembling a text-book of the facts of comparative psychology, to which men of science, and also metaphysicians, may turn whenever they may have occasion to acquaint themselves with the particular level of intelligence to which this or that species of animals attains.” But this is only one of the objects with which he has undertaken the treatment of the psychology of animals. The second and more important object “is that of considering the facts of animal intelligence in their relation to the theory of Descent.” The present volume supplies the basis for this mode of considering the facts. “While complete in itself as a statement of the facts of Comparative Psychology,” it is preliminary to a second division of the work, which is to be brought out as a separate treatise under the title of “Mental Evolution.”

Animal Intelligence.

By George J. Romanes, Zoological Secretary to the Linnean Society. International Scientific Series. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, and Co., 1882.)