Animal Life

Abstract

THIS is a fascinating introduction to the study of animal life, marked by freshness of outlook, stimulating exposition, and vivid style. To Dr. Gamble—editor though he be of an austere “Practical Zoology”—animal life is “a pageant,” “a moving spectacle,”and his inquiry is kinetic throughout. What is all this bustle about, what are the leading motives, what are the ends achieved? In developing his subject he has proceeded by the use of three leading motives that differentiate animals from plants—movement, the acquisition of solid food, and the nervous control of response to changing order, and the three main problems the solutions of which he considers are the maintenance of self, the development of self, and the progress of the race, though he is careful to point out that the last is “rather a motive that possesses animals than is possessed by them.” He begins by contrasting animal and plant life:—

Animal Life.

By Dr. F. W. Gamble, Pp. xviii+305. (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1908.) Price 6s. net.