 The Soul of the White Ant by Eugene Marais, originally published in 1937 in Africans this edition 2018 by Distant Mirror, read by David Major. The original publisher's note, Eugene Marais was born in a farming community near Pretoria in 1872. Journalism was his first career but he later studied law in London and by 1910 was in Johannesburg trying to establish himself as an advocate. Increasing depression finally drove him to retreat to Waterburg, a mountain area in the Northern Transvaal. Settling near a large group of Chukma baboons he became the first man to conduct a prolonged study of primates in the wild. It was this period that produced the book My Friends the Baboons and provided the major inspiration for The Soul of the Ape. He returned to Pretoria to practice law, to resume his career as a journalist, to continue his animal studies, and to write poetry in Africans. In 1926, the year after he had published a definitive article on his original research and conclusions about the White Ant, a world-famous European author took half of Marais's life work and published it as his own. This plagiarism may well have been a major factor in Marais' final collapse. Plagued for many years by ill health and an addiction to morphine, he took his own life in March 1936. The original translator's preface. The name of Eugene in Marais is known to all Africans speaking South Africans as a writer of short stories and verse. He himself, however, would wish to be remembered for his lifelong study of termites and apes. He began his working life after leaving college as a journalist, then studied medicine for four years but eventually took up law. A scholar and a man of culture he chose, nevertheless, to live for a period extending over many years in a ron-table or hut in the lonely Waterberg Mountains, learning to know and make friends with a troupe of wild baboons whose behaviour he wished to study. He tamed them to such a degree that he could move among them and handle them without any fear or danger to himself. At the same time he also examined the other end of the chain and studied termite life. Sample complete. Ready to continue?