History

Do you love animals and the idea of pets in your home?
This book has been, until now, unavailable online. Rather than a How-To guide, it is presented strictly as “Don’t Do This at Home!”
This annotated version provides additional information, such as a short biography and photo of the author and reference to current municipal by-laws about keeping exotic pets.

Review 

This charming Edwardian e-book on pets and how to keep them, written by Frank Finn in 1907 is now wonderfully annotated with delicious historical and additional up-to-date material by editor Merridy Cox. It starts off with 'Beasts': "the advantage of keeping beasts (except, of course, bats) lies in the fact that they are incapable of flight and have dispositions more responsive to handling and caressing than most other animals". This would have certainly been a book that Downton Abbey's Lord Grantham would have consulted on matters to do with his beloved yellow lab, Isis or Mrs. Patmore on her chicken-filching cat... In reference to guinea pigs as pets, Finn tells us, "These little animals, however, in addition to their charms of colour and quaint liveliness, and eminent suitability for pets, have a positive practical utility in being good for food..." then goes on to describe how to cook them! Apparently, frying is the best!
Beasts as pets include: hedgehogs, flying foxes, meerkats, badger, mongooses, racoons, capuchins, and so many more.
In her annotations, Cox shares lively and often entertaining historical perspective on the material.

This e-book describes the life of Linnaeus and how he created a binomial system to name plants and animals.

Demystify taxonomy and how to format Latin names in publications.