After Aristotle 73 



contains excellent observations, and he is worthy of inclu- 

 sion among the fathers of botany. In his vast treatise De 

 animalibus, hampered as he is by his learning and verbosity, 

 he shows himself a true observer and one who has absorbed 

 something of the spirit of the great naturalist to whose works 

 he had devoted a lifetime of study and on which he professes to 

 be commenting. We see clearly the leaven of the Aristotelian 

 spirit working, though Albert is still a schoolman. We may 

 select for quotation a passage on the generation offish, a subject 

 on which some of Aristotle's most remarkable descriptions 

 remained unconfirmed till modern times. These descriptions 

 impressed Albert in the same way as they do the modern 

 naturalist. To those who know nothing of the stimulating power 

 of the Aristotelian biological works, Albert's description of the 

 embryos of fish and his accurate distinction of their mode of 

 development from that of birds, by the absence of an allantoic 

 membrane in the one and its presence in the other, must surely 

 be startling. Albert depends on Aristotle a third-hand version 

 of Aristotle but does not slavishly follow him. 



' Between the mode of development (anathomiam genera- 

 tionis) of birds' and fishes' eggs there is this difference : during 

 the development of the fish the second of the two veins 

 which extend from the heart [as described by Aristotle in 

 birds] does not exist. For we do not find the vein which 

 extends to the outer covering in the eggs of birds which 

 some wrongly call the navel because it carries the blood to 

 the exterior parts ; but we do find the vein that corre- 

 sponds to the yolk vein of birds, for this vein imbibes the 

 nourishment by which the limbs increase. ... In fishes as 

 in birds, channels extend from the heart first to the head 

 and the eyes, and first in them appear the great upper 

 parts. As the growth of the young fish increases the albu- 

 men decreases, being incorporated into the members of the 

 young fish, and it disappears entirely when development and 



