96 THE HISTORY OF BIOLOGY 



advance of biology, and though he by no means merits the vaunting eulogy 

 which a contemporary artist wrote under his portrait — that, though not in 

 his appearance, yet in his genius he resembled Aristotle — nevertheless his 

 work has exercised a powerful influence, and it was not until BufFon's great 

 zoological work in the eighteenth century that Aldrovandi's was definitely 

 out-distanced. 



Apart from these representatives of the knowledge of the animal world 

 as then known, certain research-workers are worthy of mention who devoted 

 themselves to the study of particular animal groups with which they dealt 

 monographically. In the best of these monographs there is really far more 

 evidence of independence in research and originality of ideas than in the great 

 collective works; in the former is best seen that power of independent obser- 

 vation and investigation of natural objects which was a feature of the science 

 of the Renaissance. 



GuiLLAUME RoNDELET was bom in 1507 at Montpellier in the south of 

 France, where he also worked later as a professor. He studied first in his own 

 district and then as body-physician to a distinguished personage on his travels 

 in Italy, where among other people he made the acquaintance of the young 

 Aldrovandi, who received much sound teaching from him. As a professor he 

 established in his native city an anatomical theatre, but he had not been 

 working there long as a teacher when he died, in the year 1556. His fame as 

 a biologist rests on his work De fiscibus marinis. In this book he describes 

 and illustrates the aquatic animals he knows, for he regards as fishes not 

 only seals and whales, but also crustaceans, molluscs, echinoderms, worms, 

 and other marine invertebrates. He makes a very careful study of whales, 

 fishes and cephalopods. According to his own statement, he dissected a large 

 number of these creatures and he also gives a number of correct particulars 

 which are sometimes at variance with the great authority Aristotle. He fur- 

 ther compares, as far as was possible, the same organs in different fishes, giv- 

 ing exact accounts of different maxillary and dental forms, different branchice, 

 etc. However, his comparative work practically gets stranded, owing to the 

 impossibility of finding resemblances between the vertebrate and invertebrate 

 forms discussed. His attempts at classification are likewise very primitive. 

 He differentiates between selachians and osseans, which again are divided 

 into "flat" and "high" fish; moreover, whales are dealt with in a group by 

 themselves. He has as little notion of species in the modern sense as had 

 Gesner and Aldrovandi, and therefore, like them, he had to begin the de- 

 scription of every form by recounting as many names for it as possible. On 

 the other hand, he avoids for the most part the useless petty details of scholar- 

 ship with which the two last-mentioned authors of collective works over- 

 burdened their accounts, and this at once gives to his work an impression of 

 greater accuracy. And though he certainly does illustrate a number of mar- 



