RISE AND PROGRESS OF ZOOLOGY. 7 



that such ideas are grounded upon partial consider- 

 ations, and they are at once refuted by such names 

 as those of Newton and Bacon. Furthermore, it 

 should be remembered that the most ordinary ob- 

 server can readily distinguish a quadruped from a 

 bird, a snake from a fish, and a vertebrated from 

 a boneless animal. All these distinctions are obvious, 

 and, therefore, known even to the vulgar. Nor does 

 it require any great skill to express these differences 

 in words. The same may be said of those secondary 

 divisions by which a beetle may be known from a 

 butterfly, and these, again, from a bee. It is not 

 so much, therefore, from having embodied facts like 

 these into classic language that the philosopher of 

 Stagyra derives his high fame ; it rather reposes 

 upon the peculiar tact with which he brought the 

 rules of philosophic reasoning to bear upon a 

 subject hitherto neglected, — upon the extent and 

 depth of his personal researches, — upon the clear- 

 ness with which he arranged his results, — and, above 

 all, upon those obscure perceptions which he ac- 

 quired, while so employed, of hidden truths, which 

 were only to be developed in subsequent ages. Nor 

 should that innate grandeur of his mind be forgotten, 

 which led him, in an age of universal superstition, 

 to discard from his work all those popular tales, and 

 fancies, and beliefs, which were received by the 

 mass of his countrymen as religious truths, sanc- 

 tioned by antiquity, interwoven in their history, and 

 consecrated in their poetry. The death of this 

 great father of our science was the death of natural 

 history in the Grecian era. The splendour of his 

 discoveries passed like a comet. He left no luminary 

 B 4 



