PROGRESS OF ICHTHYOLOGY. 121 



ve now confine ourselves,) in a scientific point of view, and in a wa~> 

 which shows genius. 



"\Y e may pass over, therefore, the other ancient authors from whose 

 writings Cuvier, with great learning and sagacity, has levied contri- 

 butions to the history of ichthyology ; as Theophrastus, Ovid, Pliny, 

 Oppian, Athenaeus, ^Elian, Ausonius, Galen. We may, too, leave 

 unnoticed the compilers of the middle ages, who did little but abstract 

 and disfigure the portions of natural history which they found in the 

 ancients. Ichthyological, like other knowledge, was scai<cly sought 

 except in books, and on that very account was not understood when it 

 was found. 



Period of Erudition. Better times at length came, and men began 



** O ' ^3 



to observe nature for themselves. The three great authors who are 

 held to be the founders of modern ichthyology, appeared in the mid- 

 dle of the sixteenth century ; these were Belon, Kondelet, and Salvi- 

 ani, who all published about 1555. All the three, very different from 

 the compilers who filled the interval from Aristotle to them, themselv.-- 

 saw and examined the fishes which they describe, and have given faith- 

 ful representations of them. But, resembling in that respect tlie 

 founders of modern botany, Brassavola, Ruellius, Tragus, and others. 

 they resembled them in this also, that they attempted to make their 

 own observations a commentary upon the ancient writers. Faithful 

 to the spirit of their time, they are far more careful to make out the 

 names which each fish bore in the ancient world, and to bring together 

 scraps of their history from the authors in whom these names occur, 

 than to describe them in a lucid manner; so that without their figures, 

 says Cuvier, it would be almost as difficult to discover their species as 

 those of the ancients. 



The difficulty of describing and naming species so that they can be 

 recognized, is little appreciated at first, although it is in reality the 

 main-spring of the progress of the sciences of classification. Aristotle 

 never dreamt that the nomenclature which was in use in his time 

 could ever become obscure; 3 hence he has taken no precaution to 

 enable his readers to recognize the species of which he speaks ; and 

 in him and in other ancient authors, it requires much labor and great 

 felicity of divination to determine what the names mean. The per- 

 ception of this difficulty among modern naturalists led to systems, and 

 to nomenclature founded upon system ; but these did not come into 



3 Cuvier, p. 17. 



