SIGNED--YERKES' FIRST BOOK. The Dancing Mouse: A Study in Animal Behavior by Yerkes, Robert Mearns - 1907

New York: The Macmillan Co., 1907. 1.

1907 FIRST BOOK BY COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGIST AND PRIMATOLOGIST ROBERT YERKES--A GUIDE TO THE STUDY OF ANIMAL BEHAVIOR BASED ON PERSONAL OBSERVATIONS OF DANCING MICE--SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR.

8 inches tall hardcover, publisher's brown cloth binding, embossed title to cover, gilt title to spine, inscribed and signed front free endpaper, "A souvenir to Dr. and Mrs. Nitschi, September, 1944/ from Robert M. Yerkes," frontis photographs of dancing mice, xxi, 290 pp, 33 figures, 53 tables. Light rubbing to cover edges, light browning to page edges, very good in custom archival mylar cover.

ROBERT MEARNS YERKES (1876 - 1956) was an American psychologist, ethologist, and primatologist best known for his work in intelligence testing and in the field of comparative psychology. He was a pioneer in the study both of human and primate intelligence and of the social behavior of gorillas and chimpanzees. Yerkes' early career is chronicled in his National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir (1965). "The expectation that he would go on to the study of medicine at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia was sidetracked by an unexpected loan of one thousand dollars for a year at Harvard. After earning an A.B. degree there in 1898 he continued as a graduate student for a year in zoology, working with E. L. Mark, G. H. Parker, C. B. Davenport, and W. E. Castle. Then, under the influence of Josiah Royce and Hugo Munsterberg, he shifted to animal psychology and received his Ph.D. in 1902, with a dissertation on the sensory reaction and physiology of the nervous system of the jellyfish. Professor Munsterberg offered him an instructorship in comparative psychology, with half time for research and a salary of one thousand dollars per year. Munsterberg asked the friendly question: 'Can you afford to accept it, Yerkes?' To this Yerkes replied: 'No, but I shall, nevertheless.' Thus began a fifteen year period of service to Harvard, first as an instructor (1902- 1908), then as an assistant professor of comparative psychology (1908-1917)." In 1907, Yerkes published his first book, The Dancing Mouse (offered here). From the

PREFACE: "This book is the direct result of what, at the time of its occurrence, seemed to.be an unimportant incident in the ourse of my scientific work - the presentation of a pair of lancing mice to the Harvard Psychological Laboratory. Ay interest in the peculiarities of behavior which the creaires exhibited, as I watched them casually from day to day, soon became experiment-impelling, and almost before I realzed it, I was in the midst of an investigation of their senses md intelligence."

PROVENANCE: The recipient of the book was likely Dr. Emil Witschi (1890-1971), senior scientist and program specialist for reproductive physiology at Rockefeller University. He authored "Sex Deviations, Inversions, and Parabiosis" and "Development of Vertebrates" and was a former president of the American Society of Zoologists.