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 NATURAL-HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS. 



Barok CuviEa's Lectures on the History of the Natural Sciences. 



Lecture X — The Natural Sciencesunder the Ptolemies.^ 

 The three great branches of natural history, zoology, botany, and mineralogy, had 

 arrived in a few years, and by the labours of two individuals alone, at a consider- 

 able degree of perfection. If at this period the same method had been persisted 

 in, tlie study of nature had been pursued, and the observations which were made 

 had been classed, there is no doubt that the sum of positive knowledge would 

 have continued to increase rapidly. But after the death of Theophrastus, Greece 

 was agitated by troubles which no longer allowed the study of natural history, 

 (which requires tranquillity, and a certain preparation,) to be prosecuted ; and soon 

 the speculative studies could alone be continued at Athens, and even these, in 

 those days of persecution, 'no longer shone with the same lustre as in the fine 

 days of the republic. 



Science took refuge at this period in Alexandria ; but even in the Museum the 

 great activity which had originated from the impulse given by Aristotle, very soon 

 slackened. Some of the learned men, adopting the dreamy philosophy whiph 

 already began to prevail in the capital of Egypt, wandered out of the proper direc- 

 tion, — others abandoned themselves to a certain indolence, which made them ne- 

 ^ect direct observation. Having the power to use a very large library, an 

 entirely new resource, and whose utility on that account was more accurately felt, 

 they occupied themselves in discussing the facts which the books furnished to them, 

 instead of thinking of obtaining new ones. Criticism took birth from their la- 

 bours, undoubtedly a very useful art, but which at that period was somewhat 

 premature. All sedentary studies, such as we call cabinet studies, mathematics,, 

 history, poetry, were cultivated in preference, and the natural sciences were 

 soon no longer followed but in their relation to medicine. Botany ceased to 

 be studied for itself, but it was still the object of the labours of the Rhizotomse, 

 who applied themselves to the study of the medicinal properties of plants. 



These Rhizotomae, who were in some manner herborists, and who enjoyed 

 the same reputation as physicians, were nevertheless not ordinarily destitute of ge- 

 neral knowledge, Euthydemes of Athens, who first cultivated the melon, from seed 

 which had been brought from Persia ; Clearchus, who introduced the plum-tree ; 

 Phragas of Ereses, and some others, whose names have been preserved, were not 

 strangers to philosophical studies, and it is remarkable that they all belonged to 

 the peripatetic school. 



A hundred years previous to the period with which we are now occupied, ana- 

 tomy did not exist, and Hippocrates, as we have previously stated, only knew of 

 human organization, that which he could externally perceive, or which he had oc- 

 casion to observe in the treatment of wounds. A little earlier, it is true, Alcmeon 

 appears to have made some interesting discoveries on the internal structure of 

 animals ; but the prejudices of his age did not allow him to publish them nor to 

 pursue them. Heraclites, who devoted himself to the same studies, was obliged 

 to retire among the tombs. The science did not, then, exist before Aristotle, 

 who, by the study of comparative anatomy, arrived suddenly at sufficiently exact 

 and general notions, and who even, for particular cases, indicated, often with 

 much accuracy, the variety of organization from one animal to another. 



The investigations of Aristotle were followed by the physicians, and applied to 

 the human species. But as in Greece every mutilation practised on a dead person, 

 even with a scientific view, would have been looked upon as a horrible profana- 

 tion, as a crime deserving the punishment of death, those who wished to instruct 

 themselves in anatomy, were obliged to go into Egypt, where the practice of em- 

 balming had necessarily given some notions of the arrangement and the structure 



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