This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1903 edition. Excerpt: ... WHALES AT HOME I Natural history, at once the most fascinating and widely followed of all sciences, is now enjoying the full sunshine of popularity. The life-histories of all kinds of animals are not only being studied with a closeness of attention never before undertaken by so large a number of capable investigators at the same time, but these same students are, in many cases, lavishly spreading abroad their discoveries in such a manner that the reading thereof is a veritable delight, entrancing as any masterpiece of the human imagination. Eeaders of the Strand, who by the hundred thousand have followed Mr. Grant Allen's marvellous tales of insect life and character, will admit that under his pleasant guidance the study of entomology, the very name of which used to suggest some dry-as-dust old professor, poring with bleared eyes over musty volumes in the midst of an uncanny collection of "bugs," has become a delight, something in literature which could be turned to with as keen a zest as any urchin ever manifested upon getting a continuing instalment of his favourite gory fiction. And what grown-up child has ever taken up the "Jungle Books" without being enchanted, carried away by the feeling that he or she was gaily wandering in a new world, whose inhabitants were their very good friends, and whose ways, though hitherto beyond the range of our ideas, were now in some mysterious yet wholly satisfactory manner made perfectly intelligible to us. Perhaps the most perfect proof that can be adduced of the value of this literature is the satisfaction of the children with it. For that story which can at once profoundly interest the highest intellect of an adult, and hold captive the other-world mind of a child, may be pronounced as nearly...