796 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the use of intoxicating liquor are placed where they belong — that is to 

 say, on those who undertake to make a profit from supplying it ; and 

 they are under inducements to reduce such burdens and expenses to a 

 minimum. It may be that no one will be willing to take the risk of 

 engaging in the business with these liabilities, but for this I care not, 

 for we should then have an unobjectionable form of prohibition. 



F 



AEISTOTLE AS A ZOOLOGIST. 



By FEEDEEIK A. FEENALD. 



"^OR over twenty centuries the philosophical writings of Aristotle 

 have sustained his reputation as one of the greatest thinkers that 

 the world has ever seen. Although he is generally thought of as a 

 metaphysician and a logician, these names by no means denote the 

 whole field of his labors. It was common for scholars in his age to 

 take all knowledge for their province, and the limited attainments of 

 the time allowed one writer to produce exhaustive treatises on every 

 branch. To discover and state the laws of deduction with a com- 

 pleteness and accuracy which have left nothing to be added or taken 

 away since would seem to be a sufficient labor for one man ; but, be- 

 sides doing this, Aristotle wrote considerable works on ethics, politics, 

 rhetoric, physics, astronomy, physiology, and zoology. There is not the 

 same unanimity, however, in estimating his scientific achievements as 

 in the opinion of his writings on logic and speculative philosophy. 



Aristotle's " History of Animals," says Buffon, " is, perhaps, even 

 now the best work of its kind ; he probably knew animals better, and 

 under more general views, than we do now. Although the 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 

 those of Aristotle and Pliny." The laudatory language of the illus- 

 trious Cuvier is equally strong. Of the " History of Animals " he 

 writes : " I can not read this book without being ravished with aston- 

 ishment. Indeed, it is impossible to conceive how a single man was 

 able to collect and compare the multitude of particular facts implied 

 in the numerous general rules and aphorisms contained in this work, 

 and of which his predecessors never had any idea." Again, "Not 

 only did he know a great number of species, but he studied and de- 

 scribed them after a vast and luminous plan which, perhaps, none 

 of his successors have approached. . . . Everywhere Aristotle observes 

 facts with attention." On the other band, Lewes, in his essay on 

 Aristotle, says : " It is difficult to speak of Aristotle without exaggera- 

 tion — he is felt to be so mighty, and is known to be so wrong. His- 

 tory, surveying the whole scope of his pretensions, gazes on him with 



