SKETCH OF PIERRE BEL ON. 



695 



nine, and size ; the gall ; the intestine, its direction and disposi- 

 tion ; and the pyloric appendages, which he called apophyses 

 ccBCOs. Long before the fine researches of Cuvier, Mierendorff, 

 Valenciennes, and Dnvernay, Belon first studied the conforma- 

 tion of the liver in more than thirty species of fishes." We copy 

 from this book a curious picture of a hippopotamus of the Nile 

 devouring a crocodile (Fig. 2). The germ of embryology appears 



Fig. 2.— The Hippopotamus op the Nile (after Pierre Belon). 



in a most remarkable manner in a representation, in the first of 

 the books named in our note, of the matrix and embryo of the 

 porpoise. These works, in which the genius of Belon showed 

 itself to be of a superior order, were followed by the book on the 

 " Nature of Birds," * which is described by M. Grid as an " imper- 

 ishable work, a fruitful source of instruction to the philosopher 

 and the naturalist." It was the crowning work of Belon's life, and 

 marks an era in the history of science, for in it was developed and 

 illustrated the idea of a uniform plan of structure among animals. 

 Belon had already in his " Fishes " and his descriptions of plants 

 definitely applied the distinctions of genera and species, and had 

 invented the binary nomenclature to take the place of the long- 

 drawn and often not satisfactory descriptions with which previous 

 authors had tried to mark these differences. More than one hun- 

 dred and eighty years before Linnaeus he had brought similar 

 plants into single groups, to which he applied common or generic 

 names — as Fagi, JJlmi, Fraxini, Aceres, Corni, etc. — and had then 

 substituted for the usual descriptive phrase a specific name, some- 

 times an adjective relating to an external quality, as Smilax aspera, 

 Smilax Icevis, Papaver corniculatum ; sometimes one of the com- 

 mon names of the period or of a celebrated person. 



At the very beginning of his book on " Birds," Belon placed a 

 representation of the skeleton of a bird face to face with a human 

 skeleton, and marked by a common lettering the features and 

 parts common to both. By this, creating the comparative method, 



* " Histoire de la nature des oyseaux, avec leurs descriptions et naifs pourtraicts reti- 

 rez du naturel, escripte en sept livres," 1555. 



