Welcome to the home of Mr. Darwin Misread Miss Peacock's Mind by Merle Jacobs.

This book is for anyone interested in the mysteries of life, from the general reader to specialists in science.

The book particularly addresses the problem of what processes operate in the minds of the earth's creatures as they select their mates, and what this has to do with the origin of the ornate embellishments observed among various species of animals.

I became interested in this problem already as a boy observing (with a homemade telescope) scarlet tanagers in the wilds of the Appalachian Mountains of southwestern Pennsylvania. I also raised canaries and chickens there, and so became interested in the intimate behavior of birds.

The canaries had free access to my bedroom, which was cluttered with an array of taxidermy materials and small machines. Since I had an intense interest in physics and astronomy, as well as biology, the room was also spattered with books, which I read well into the night.

I was fifth from the oldest in a family of 11 siblings. Our ancestors had settled there after leaving their homelands in Germany and Switzerland. In Pennsylvania they farmed plateaus surrounded by steep, rocky hills and valleys bottomed by streams. Some of them used thorn bushes as harrows to be dragged over their small fields. They slept in their framed houses amid the howling of wild bobcats.

We went to a one-room school in our short pants and, occasionally, straw hats. At recess we played "Deer." Some of us would hide in little clumps of trees. The idea of the game was to run like a deer from one clump of trees to the other without getting "shot" with a ball thrown swiftly by the numerous surrounding hunters.

When not in school or doing chores, I spent numerous hours observing birds. I continued to ponder the problem of ornate plumage through my high school and college years. Finally, in graduate school, I took up the related problem of mate selection in earnest.

The idea for Mr. Darwin Misread Miss Peacock's Mind arose as I was about to receive the Emeritus designation at Goshen College in the mid-1980s. After being freed from the laboratory and classroom, I began to read on a wide variety of subjects. In this process, I became concerned that interpretations of animal behavior relative to mate choice seemed to be exceeding the boundaries of natural science. The book was written with the aim of contributing to balanced interpretations of animal behavior. I hope the book will inspire others to investigate this fascinating subject.