ARISTOTLE AS A ZOOLOGIST. 799 



male stag shedding his horns he writes, " It is said that the left horn 

 has never yet been seen, for the animal hides it because it has some 

 medical properties." " When stags are bitten by the phalangium or 

 other such creature, they collect a number of crabs and eat them." 

 These statements are made by Aristotle without a single hint that he 

 does not believe them. Had he regarded them as fabulous, it is prob- 

 able that he would have so intimated, as he is in the habit of doing 

 when he regards stories as " unworthy of credit." Mr. Lewes men- 

 tions Cuvier's instancing four generalizations to prove the immense 

 acquaintance Aristotle must have had with particulars, and adds : " I 

 will quote four others (forty might be found), all taken from the first 

 book, which exemplify plainly enough how easily large and careful 

 induction could be dispensed with : 1. The lion has no cervical verte- 

 brae, but a single bone in its neck. 2. Long-lived persons have one or 

 two lines which extend through the whole hand ; short-lived persons 

 have two lines, and these do not extend through the whole hand. 3. 

 Man has, in proportion to his size, the largest and the moistest brain. 

 4. The forehead is large in stupid men, small in lively men, broad in 

 men predisposed to insanity, and round in high-spirited men." 



Aristotle's account of the halcyon, or kingfisher, is a curious mixt- 

 ure of fact and fiction, the latter largely predominating. He gives a 

 good popular description of the bird, but says also : " Birds generally 

 breed in the spring and the beginning of summer, but the kingfisher 

 is an exception, for it produces its young about the time of the winter 

 solstice ; wherefore fine days which happen at this season are called 

 halcyon days, seven days before the solstice and seven days after it, 

 as Simonides has written, as when Jupiter in the winter month pre- 

 pares fourteen days, which mortals call the windless season, the sacred 

 nurse of the variegated halcyon. . . . These halcyon days do not al- 

 ways happen in this country at the season of the solstice, but they 

 nearly always occur in the Sicilian Sea." He has some curious stories 

 about eagles, and here, too, seems to depend upon the poets : " The 

 eagle lays three eggs, but hatches only two, as is also related in the 

 poems of Musoeus, * the bird which lays three eggs, hatches two and 

 cares only for one.' Such things often occur, yet even three young 

 ones have been seen in the nest. . . . The sea-eagle is very quick- 

 sighted, and compels its young ones while still naked to look at the 

 sun, and if one of them will not do so it beats it and turns it round ; 

 and the young one which first weeps it kills, the other it rears." 



Among other curious zoological statements of Aristotle's which 

 seem to receive his support, and which may be set down as current 

 folk-lore of his time, are the following : " If any one make a noise as 

 grasshoppers fly along, they emit a kind of moisture, as agriculturists 

 say. They feed on dew, and if a person advances to them bending 

 his finger and then straightening it, they will remain more quiet than 

 if the finger is put out straight at once, and will climb up the finger, 



