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classifier, but also a morphologist and inductive philosopher. He studied the life 

 histories of many insects, he made many dissections and resolved the organs into 

 tissues. His classification of inects, although based largely on external features, 

 remained unimproved for more than 2,000 years, and his generalizations contained 

 the ideas of an evolution from the simplest to the highest organisms in nature. 



Concerning his own work Aristotle says : " I found no basis prepared, no 



models to copy mine is the first step, and therefore a small one, though 



worked out with much thought and hard labor. . It must be looked at as a first 

 step and judged with indulgence." 



Although Aristotle believed in the spontaneous generation of certain insects 

 and other animals that appeared in the processes of putrefaction, his views re- 

 garding the generation of the higher animals are expressed in the sentence, " All 

 living creatures, whether they swim, or walk, or fly, and whether they come into 

 the world in the form of an animal, or of an egg, they are engendered in the 

 same way.'' In fact, Aristotle had very definite even modern views regarding 

 embryology, for he had studied the forming chick in the shell. He might be 

 termed an epigenist, for he believed that " the parts of the future organism do 

 not pre-exist as such, but make their appearance in due order of succession." 



It is interesting to note that the methods of Aristotle are those of modern 

 scientific workers, viz., investigation by observation and experiment. It 

 required, however, more than 2,000 years for workers to realize the importance 

 of his methods in the study of nature. 



Regarding Aristotle's knowledge of insect development and structure it may 

 be said that he knew that there were male and female insects, and that they re- 

 produced sexually. He knew that drone bees develop Avithout fertilization, but 

 he called the " queen " the " king " of the hive. He thought that " nits " do not 

 produce animals, that spiders bring forth live worms instead of eggs, and produce 

 threads of their webs from the external part of their bodies, that caterpillars are 

 produced from cabbages daily, and that many insects rise spontaneously from 

 putrefaction. He believed, too, that all invertebrates were bloodless. He separated 

 the Crustacea from insects, and divided the insects into winged and wingless. 

 His sub-divisions were also partly perfectly natural. He considered the larva 

 a prematurely hatched embryo and the pupa as a second egg. 



Professor Sundevall estimates that Aristotle indicated and described about 

 60 species of insects and arachnidans and about 24 species of Crustacea and annelids. 



Aristotle is said to have written a treatise on bees, but if so, no trace of it 

 has reached us. Columella, however, tells us that the Greeks were proficient bee- 

 keepers. That the Romans practised apiculture is very evident for Virgil devotes 

 the fourth book of the Georgics entirely to a discussion of bees, their habits, 

 economy, and management. Following Aristotle, he calls the queen the king of 

 the hive, and believed that bees originate from decomposing bodies of bullocks 

 (See also Judges 15 for a similar belief). 



The Greek poets occasionally refer to insects. For example, Xenarchos says: 

 " Happy is the Cicada, since its wife has no voice." 



While Aristotle's knowledge of insects was full of crudities and errors, it 

 must be confessed that he did a large amount of valuable work that has stood the 

 test of time. 



After Aristotle, the study of natural history declined and no work appeared 

 until that of Pliny the Elder (23-79 A.D.) the Roman general and historian. 

 His voluminous writings on natural history have been well preserved but they 

 contain nothing new. They are complications of the works of previous writers- 



