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PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



naturalists as well as philologists — and this latter quality is indis- 

 pensable. Even the ablest scholar, when liis author treats of 

 physical science, will, in spite of his learning, find difficulties 

 apparently insoluble, which can be readily solved by any one 

 acquainted with natural history. What would perplex a Scaliger 

 might be no difficulty to a Cuvier. Hence, besides an acquaint- 

 ance with the ancient authors, a knowledge of the natural history 

 of the south of Europe is equally indispensable, and it is to the 

 absence of this that many failures are to be attributed. In 

 the middle of the sixteenth century, Belon, the French naturahst, 

 exhibited a fine example of the true method by wliich these in- 

 quiries should be pursued. With an adequate knowledge of the 

 older authors, he undertook a journey to the Levant, studying the 

 animals in the country where they had been described, and collect- 

 ing the vernacular names used by the modern Greeks, which are 

 not unfrequently the same as those which we find in Aristotle or 

 Athenseus. 



It may appear strange to some that the names of animals which 

 occur in the Greek writers should be so obscure, and their true 

 import so difficult to ascertain; but we must remember we are 

 treating of the beginning of science, and not of its perfection, and 

 as an ancient writer, as if in anticipation of such on objection, has 

 remarked, " Nulleras consilmmata est, dum incipit." The number 

 of animals known to the Greeks was small, and they wrote as if 

 their language was to last for ever, and required no definitions. 

 There was no difi^erence between the scientific and the common 

 language. It is also to be remarked that the history of animals by 

 Aristotle is not a work like that of Buffbn, or the Systema Naturce 

 of Linnaeus, and contains neither long dissertations, nor systematic 

 arrangement and minute description. It is rather a philosophy of 

 zoology based on comparative anatomy and physiology. It takes 

 a survey of the animal kingdom as then known, and for that pur- 

 pose institutes natural groups under which animals may be classi- 

 fied, but nowhere enters into the details of specific descriptions. 



