INW Natural' Historical Collections. 



his native country, and settled at Athens. He was the friend of Pericles, and 

 partook of the hatred that was excited against him. Having been accused of 

 atheism by the enemies of that great man, he was obliged to retire to Lamsacus, 

 Where he died at the age of 72, in the year before Christ 428. 



It was he who first clearly distinguished between mind and matter. In his 

 time, the philosophers considered motion as inherent in bodies, or regarded bo- 

 dies themselves as pure illusions. Anaxagoras established the reality of matter, 

 and at the same time that of mind, which governs and arranges it. The princi- 

 ple, as will be seen, is that of natural theology, which serves as a basis to all the 

 religions of the present day. Nothing, therefore, could be more unjust than the 

 accusation of atheism directed against the man who was the first theist among 

 the Greeks. 



Anaxagoras does not admit as a principle either fire or water, or even the 

 union of the four elements. According to him, there is a diversity in matter. 

 Each kind of matter is formed of corpuscles similar to itself, and therefore simi- 

 lar to each other. From the singular objections which the ancients offered to the 

 theory of homwmeria, (which was the name they gave to these component mole- 

 cules,) it would appear that they had not comprehended it. They asked, for ex- 

 ample, if a man is composed of little men, as if Anaxagoras had ever admitted 

 this mode of composition for any thing else than for simple bodies. 



None of the works of Anaxagoras has come down to us ; but some of his 

 apophthegms have been preserved. He said that nothing originates from no- 

 thing, that all is in all, and can produce all, meaning no doubt by this that each 

 compound body contains all the species of simple molecules which, on being com- 

 bined in other proportions, would give rise to the mixed bodies. 



Our philosopher sought the reason of things in observation. It is related that 

 ihe people having looked upon a ram which had only one horn, as a fearful pro- 

 digy, Anaxagoras dissected the animal, and explained the physical cause of the 

 monstrosity. He was not, however, very strict in his examination of facts, if it be 

 true that he believed weasels, the ibis, and crows to produce their young by the 

 mouth. A very large meteoric stone fell, in his time, near (Egospomatus ; and 

 to account for this fact, it is alleged he concluded the sky to be vaulted with 

 stones. He believed the moon to be inhabited, and considered the sun as in in- 

 flamed metallic mass. This gave occasion to one of his principal accusations. 



Anaxagoras was the forerunner of Socrates, of whom we shall speak in the next 

 'Lecture. * 



Account of several New Species of Grouse (Tetrao) from North America. 

 By James Wilson^, Esq. F.R.S.E., &c — At a late meeting of the Wer- 

 nerian Society, Mr. Wilson gave a detailed account of several new species of 

 grouse discovered by Mr. David Douglas among the Rocky Mountains in North 

 America. He observed in general, that birds of this genus are of a hardy con- 

 stitution, and patient of extreme cold. They only occur in northern or temperate 

 countries, and have not yet been discovered in Africa, in the eastern parts of 

 ■ Asia, or in South America. The special localities which they affect vary ac- 

 cording to the different kinds ; and even the haunts of the same species admit of 

 variation according to circumstances. The Wood Grouse—such as the Caper- 

 cailzie ( Tetrao f7"ro^a//Ms)_.prefers forests of pine ; the Red Grouse (T. Scoticus) 



J* ^,®.,^^® pleased to observe, from the last Number of the Edinburgh 

 New Philosophical Journal, that these abstracts of M. Cuvier's Lectures are 

 likely to be accurate. " Of these highly interesting Lectures, at present 

 delivering m Pans," says the Editor of that Periodical, " we shall in 

 this and the succeeding Numbers give such a view as will interest our read- 

 ers. I he reports we now publish are held by some of our friends now attend- 

 ing these l^ectures to be correct." We translate our report from Le Globe, 

 sophical'j "^'^Tli^"*^ *^^ ^^™* *""'"'* supplies the Edinburgh New Philo' 



