Natural-Historical Collections. 217 



and it is in his writings that we find the first positive facts in natural history. 

 He has given a pretty good description of the Egyptian crocodile, and of several 

 animals of the same country. He also speaks of the Hippopotamus ; but what 

 he says of it is less correct. Aristotle took advantage of these descriptions, and 

 even copied some of them verbatim. 



Xenophon speaks still more particularly of natural history. He was bom in 

 the year 445 before Christ, fifteen years after Socrates, of whom he was a pupil, 

 and whose apology he published. He only devoted part of his time to study and 

 to philosophical contemplations, having been a soldier and statesman. He was 

 with the famous expedition of the ten thousand Greeks, whom the younger Cyrus 

 had invoked as auxiliaries, and after the death of the principal officers, it was 

 ujwn him that the command of the band devolved in their retreat towards Greece. 

 Besides the account which he has left us of this expedition, we have various plii- 

 losophical and historical books of his ; but, of all his works, that which interests 

 us most is a treatise on hunting, the Cynegetics, which he composed with the 

 design of inspiring in the Grecian youth a taste for that exercise, which might 

 be useful in the time of peace for forming them for the labours of war. 



Xenophon, in this treati^, gives us accounts respecting certain animals, which 

 we should in vain look for elsewhere. He treats of the diflferent races of dogs 

 that are employed in hunting, and of two kinds of hares that occurred in Pelo- 

 ponesus. He makes known the different sorts of snares, and describes the usual 

 haunts of wild animals, their stratagems for eluding pursuit, and their means of 

 defence. Without this book, we could only suppose a very important fact in 

 zoology, which is, that certain races of wild animals have lived in climates very 

 different from those in which we now observe them. In Xenophon's time, in 

 fact, Macedonia and the northern provinces of Greece had lions, panthers, jackals, 

 and some other species which at present are found only in Africa. 



We have yet to speak of two writers whose works might have been useful to 

 Aristotle, and who both belonged to the family of Asclepiadae. These writers 

 were Hippocrates and Ctesias. 



Hippocrates, as we have said, was not the author of all the books that go under 

 his name ; but he certainly was the principal contributor to that admirable col- 

 lection, which must be considered as a general view of the lesearches of the As- 

 clepiada;. He was born| at Cos in the year before Christ 460, and died in Thes- 

 sally, at the age of nearly 100 years. In the course of this long life, he had 

 known Socrates, Plato, and even Aristotle, who lived at the court of the king 

 of Macedonia when he was himself called there for the treatment of Perdiccas' 

 disease. We have very few authentic facts respecting the life of this great phy- 

 sician. It is seen by his works that he had travelled much ; but it does not ap- 

 pear that he ever went to Egypt. It is said that he resisted the splended offers 

 which were made to him by the king of Persia, and that he wished to devote 

 himself wholly to his country. It is also said that he delivered Athens of a very 

 cruel epidemic disease ; but it is to be thought that this was not the great plague 

 of 430 ; for Thucydides, who has traced the history of that disastrous epoch, 

 does not speak of Hippocrates, who must then have been in the full vigour of all 

 his faculties. 



Hippocrates is too well known for us to describe his merits. It is known how 

 expert he was in knowing diseases, in distinguishing them by their symptoms, and 

 in deducing from these symptoms the indications of cure. In what relates to me- 

 dicine properly so called, he is almost always admirable ; but, on the other hand, 

 in anatomical knowledge his ignorance is astonishing. He was even behind 

 Plato in this respect ; at least his want of knowledge is here more manifest than 

 Plato's, as he had to enter into more details. 



Some of his errors are evidently the result of imperfect observation, but others 

 of them have alsolutely no foundation whatever. His description of the veins, 

 for example, is all imaginary. He speaks of a vein which goes from the forehead 

 to the anterior surface of the arm, and another which, arising from the lateral parts 

 of the head, goes to the back part of the arm. From beginning to end all is in- 



VOL. II. 2 E 



