SCALE-READING 2000 YEARS OLD 109 



a rough self-made microscope of the scales of a large tame carp, 

 he counted the component scale-layers lying one above the other, 

 "as if glued together," and found without exception that 

 a new layer larger than the one of the preceding year is added. 

 The carp, accidentally killed when forty years old, possessed 

 forty such layers in each scale. He adds pathetically — antici- 

 pating perhaps Lytton's — 



" A Reformer, a creed by posterity learnt 

 A century after its author is burnt " — 



that " many people accused me of telling lies on the matter ! " 1 



One cannot help being struck with acute astonishment 

 that for over the 2000 years between Aristotle and Leeuwenhoek 

 we obtain, with the exception 2 of nine words in Pliny (IX. 

 33), Senectutis indicium squamarum duritia, qucB non sunt 

 omnibus similes, cribbed and condensed, as was often his wont, 

 from Aristotle, Httle, if any, addition to our knowledge of 

 scale-reading. 



The ancient authors either ignore or are ignorant of it. 

 Nowhere, not even in that close observer Oppian, that omni- 

 vorous reader Athenaeus, that pleasant purloiner ^Elian, do 

 we read a single Hne on the subject. But our astonishment, 

 even if we allow for absence of microscope, grows acuter, when 

 we are met in the three most important Ichthyologists before 

 the eighteenth century, Belon, Salviani, and Rondolet, with 

 the same silence. 



And this fate of silence apparently prevails even after 

 Leeuwenhoek's book ; his discovery seems to have been lost 

 or remained dormant in his pages till a score of years ago. 



Had microscopes existed in his day, we may surely surmise 

 that Aristotle would have perfected the system of scale- 

 reading, and thus have come down to posterity with his title 



1 In Epistolce physiologiccB (Delft, 1719), IV. p. 401, he describes how the 

 squamulcs or scalelets of a herring (twelve years old) were found regularly 

 superimposed, each year's growth on that of the preceding year. 



2 Athenaeus, referring, however, solely to the Murex, " their growth is 

 shown by the rings on their scales," is simply quoting from Aristotle (as 

 Dindorf's text makes plain), whose term of six years he adopts : <pav(ph 5« t' 

 o(<|ij(T(i iK rfjs iv T(p oarpaKO) tXiKos (III. 37). 



