HOUGHTON ON ARTSTOTLE's HISTORY OF ANIMALS. 137 



the error of su2)posiug that Zoologicul science has made but little 

 progress since the days of the Stagyrite, nor must we be unprepared 

 to meet, in the Physical writings of our author, with many errors 

 and fables, — much chalf mingled with the grain. 



The following remark of Buffon can not certainly be regarded as 

 unimpeachable now, though it serves to show how rapid a stride 

 Zoology has made since the days of the IVench naturalist : — 



" Aristotle's History of Animals is perhaps even now the best work of its kind i 

 he probably knew animals better and under more general views than mc do now- 

 Although moderns have added their discoveries to those of the ancients, I do not 

 believe that we have many works on Natural History that we can place above ihosc 

 of Aristotle and PUny."— (J^m-^. Nat. i. p. 62.) 



Still though it would now properly be regarded as a mark of ig- 

 norance to compare the state of Zoological science as first promul- 

 gated by Aristotle, with its more developed though still imperfect 

 form as it has been handed do^vn to us by Cuvier, Milne-Edwards, 

 Owen, and a hundred other patient workers in the same inexhaustible 

 mine, it is nevertheless true that it was Aristotle who first taught us 

 to look to the internal structure as the only safe guide to a natural 

 system of classification, and who by his own anatomical investigations, 

 to which he frequently refers, led the way in which Cuvier afterwards 

 so successfully followed. 



But there is no need for me to enlarge at all on a topic with which 

 every zoologist is familiar ; the object of this paper is to call the at- 

 tention of English naturalists to the desirability of having such a 

 faithful translation of the Trepl Zwwv 'laroplag as shall present in an 

 accurate form the contents of that great book. The utility of such a 

 translation must I think be evident to every student ; he wiU find in 

 the Treatises on Animals that some of the same problems which have 

 engaged the attention of modern naturalists presented themselves 

 ages before in a somewhat similar form to the enquiries of Empedocles 

 and other ancient philosophers. Who, for instance, can fail to discern 

 in the following passage from the De Partihus Animalium the question 

 on the theory of development, as advocated by Lamarck and the author 

 of the "Vestiges of Creation:" — "Similarly some philosophers assert, 

 with respect to the generation of animals and plants, that from water 

 flowing in the body the stomach was produced, and every organ re- 

 cipient of food or excrement, and that by the passage of the breath 

 the nostrils were burst open." (Yol. i. p. 640, ed. Bekker.) The reader 

 will find, again, in Aristotle, matter relating to " Spontaneous Gene- 

 ration," a theory which has recently been advocated by M. Pouchet* 

 with considerable ability, and supported by many curious, though at 

 present inconclusive results. 



It is desirable to have an English translation of the " History of 



* Hcterogcnie, oil I'raile de la generation spontanee, Paris, 18.59, and Genese 

 ties pro1 o-organismcs dans I'air calcine et a I'aide de corps puirescible pvrtes a la 

 temperature de 1.50 degres. in Compt. Rend. Acad. Sc. Paris, 1860. 

 N. H. R.— 1862. L 



