The Life of Animals: Part 1, Chapter 02: The Half-Apes; Chapter 03: The

Brehm, Alfred Edmund, 1829-1884Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.8
Word count
126K words
Chapters
13

Tags

Foreign Language Books Natural Sciences Animal CompendiumNatural HistoryPrimatesBiological EvolutionScience EnlightenmentNature ObservationIllustrated Guide

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Het Leven der Dieren: Deel 1, Hoofdstuk 02: De Halfapen; Hoofdstuk 03: DeAuthor: Brehm, Alfred Edmund, 1829-1884,Language: Dutch, Class: QL: Science: Zoology, Release Date: Dec 14, 2005

Editor's review

This is an excerpt from the Dutch translation of The Life of Animals by the German naturalist Alfred Edmund Brehm, containing the chapter on the "half-apes" (prosimians) and another chapter. Brehm's zoology is known for its detailed descriptions covering morphology, habits, and distribution, and is a representative text of nineteenth-century natural history writing. The value of this excerpt lies mainly in the history of natural history and the history of scientific translation: readers can see how nineteenth-century European scholars classified and described animals closely related to primates, how they organized observational material, and how Dutch scientific prose was expressed. It is not a modern zoology textbook; its classificatory framework and some conclusions have been updated, and it should be read in historical context, with attention to descriptive methods and period conceptions rather than direct acceptance of specific knowledge. It is suitable as material for the history of science, translation studies, or Dutch reading, and also for readers interested in the tradition of early natural history illustrated texts. The electronic edition has no modern annotations; consulting it alongside reference works on the history of zoological classification is recommended.

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Reading tips

  1. Read the chapter titles and opening paragraphs first to identify the groups covered, then decide whether to read closely or selectively.
  2. Prepare a brief table of modern primate classification to compare old classificatory names and ranges as you read.
  3. Record the descriptive conventions and sources of observation as material for research on natural history writing and translation.
  4. Dutch readers may first read through for the general sense, then handle terminology and long sentences on a second pass.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13

FAQ

Which animal groups does this excerpt cover? According to the title information, the text contains Part 1, Chapter 2, "De Halfapen" (the prosimians), and Chapter 3 of The Life of Animals. It is an excerpt from Brehm's zoology, not a complete translation; the exact chapter range should be confirmed against the actual content of the electronic text.
Can the classifications and conclusions in the book still be used directly? They should not be used directly. Brehm wrote in the nineteenth century, and the classificatory framework, group divisions, and some descriptions of habits have been revised by modern zoology. Its value lies in the history of natural history, descriptive methods, and research on scientific translation; specific conclusions should be treated as historical material and compared with modern taxonomy.
Can I read this e-book without knowing Dutch? You can browse it with dictionaries and translation tools, but the experience will be noticeably limited. The text is nineteenth-century Dutch scientific prose with many technical terms and long sentences, and details are hard to grasp without some foundation. If your main purpose is to learn about Brehm's natural history writing, you may first look for an English translation or related research materials for support.
Is it suitable as research material for the history of science? It is suitable as case material, for example for examining nineteenth-century zoological descriptive conventions, group divisions, sources of observation, and translation practices. But it is a single excerpt and insufficient for overall judgments; it is best used together with other parts of Brehm's original work, contemporary zoologies, and research on the history of modern classification.

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About the author

Brehm, Alfred Edmund, 1829-1884 Author

Alfred Edmund Brehm (1829–1884) was a noted nineteenth-century writer on zoology. Details of his life are limited in publicly available sources, yet he left his mark on the history of European natural-history reading through the voluminous Het Leven der Dieren (The Life of Animals). The library holds twenty-two of his works, most of them fascicles of this great series, arranged by taxonomic group and covering beasts of prey, parrots, fowl, rails, waders, seabirds, rodents, and edentates, which shows how he introduced animals order by order within a classification system. His writing combines scientific description with readability, skillfully setting out habits and forms and bringing natural-history knowledge to ordinary readers; it thus had a lasting influence on later popular animal books.