2 EARLY PROGRESS 



live. But these efforts, that appear childish to iis 

 now, were the first steps in that field of knowl- 

 edge which is so extensive that all our progress 

 seems only to show us how much is left to do. 



Aristotle is the representative of the learning 

 of antiquity in Natural Science. The great mind 

 of Greece in his day, and a leader in all the in- 

 tellectual culture of his time, he was especially a 

 naturalist, and his work on Natural History is 

 a record not only of his own investigations, but 

 of all preceding study in this department. It 

 is evident that even then much had been done, 

 and, in allusion to certain peculiarities of the 

 human frame, which he does not describe in full, 

 he refers his readers to familiar works, saying, 

 that illustrations in point may be found in ana- 

 tomical text-books.* 



Strange that in Aristotle's day, two thousand 

 years ago, such books should have been in gen- 

 eral use, and that in our time we are still in 

 want of elementary text-books of Natural His- 

 tory, having special reference to the animals of 

 our own country, and adapted to the use of 

 schools. One fact in Aristotle's " History of 

 Animals ' is very striking, and makes it diffi- 

 cult for us to understand much of its contents. 

 It never occurs to him that a time may come 

 when the Greek language the language of all 



* See Aristotle's Zoology, Book I., Chapter XIV. 



