December i6, 1897] 



NATURE 



147 



to them, it is impossible to dismiss unconsidered, im- 

 probable though they may seem at first. Such legends 

 can never be wholly banished from view until we have 

 accounted for their coming into being at all ; and the 

 naturalist is thus frequently led into the domain of folk- 

 lore and the study of primitive religious ideas, which from 

 totemistic stages onwards have always in some way or 

 other touched upon the connection of the human and 

 animal worlds. The attitude of the huntsman is different 

 from both those just considered : he makes a very minute 

 study of some of the habits of a few animals, mainly with 

 a view to making himself master of them in a manner 

 gratifying to the sporting instinct. ^ 



In the volumes before us all these interests are repre- 

 sented. Tliey all deal with the attitude of the Greeks — 

 in part also of the Romans — to animal nature. Until the 

 time of Aristotle scientific study can hardly be said to 

 have existed, though in him, so far at least as method is 

 concerned, it appears suddenly in almost as systematic 

 a form as any science can boast of at the present day. 

 But hunting and the observation of the ways of animals 

 seem to have been habitual to the Greeks. No one can 

 have failed to notice the unerring accuracy with which 

 Homer, in a few graphic strokes, brings before his readers 

 some familiar scene from nature —the lion and his prey, the 

 jackals surrounding the stag, the tettix, " which in the 

 thickets, sitting on a tree, sendeth forth its thin clear 

 voice," and very many others. Again, the hunting of the 

 boar and of the stag, with all their accompaniments, 

 Homer knew well, and in the works of Dr. Kums and 

 Mr. Watkins all these and kindred topics are treated in 

 some detail. Dr. Kums confines himself to Homer, and 

 it is to students of Homer that his book will be especially 

 interesting. It is an enumeration under classified head- 

 ings of all that Homer says in different passages about 

 the various departments of nature and human nature, 

 and is a very accurate, complete and well arranged com- 

 pilation. But it is no disparagement of the book to say 

 that, for the most part, it is not of great general scientific 

 importance. External nature only enters into the poems 

 of Homer as it were by accident, in similes which illustrate 

 human action, or in descriptions of events affecting 

 human agents ; and the interest which he arouses is 

 artistic rather than scientific : we are chiefly struck with 

 the perfect description of what the poet saw, with the 

 clearness and truth to life of his pictures. Mr. Watkins, 

 in his " Gleanings," allows himself to range over the 

 whole field of classical literature, and under the title of 

 the " Ancients " he includes not only the Greeks and 

 Romans, but the early Teutonic and Celtic races, and 

 especially our own forefathers ; indeed, he deals with 

 much literature that cannot be called " ancient " in the 

 ordinary sense of the word at all, even English literature 

 down to about the sixteenth century. His work is a 

 collection of points which have interested him in the 

 course of his unusually wide reading, in regard to the 

 observation and appreciation of the animal world in 

 periods when science had not become scientific ; and we 

 find, not of course a serious or systematic contribution to 

 science or to the history of science, but a delightful 

 mosaic of quotations, anecdotes and folk-lore, very 

 artistically put together, and compared with modern 

 views as expressed in passages from Darwin and other 

 NO. 1468, VOL. 57] 



writers. The occasional antiqueness of the author's 

 language, and even the use of the long s in the type, 

 which unsympathetic critics would no doubt condemn as 

 affectation, are in keeping with a certain naivete and 

 gracefulness of manner, which add greatly to the pleasure 

 given by the large amount of entertaining information 

 which the book contains. We should not expect in such 

 a book, and we do not find, a complete exposition of the 

 .A.ristotelian " Systema Naturae " — the only great contri- 

 bution of the ancient world to natural history and 

 biology ; but the author appreciates very fairly indeed 

 the merits of Aristotle and other ancient writers from the 

 naturalist's point of view. Aristotle he recognises as 

 having " sifted much of the popular knowledge, as is his 

 wont"; though even Aristotle is gently censured as un- 

 critical in comparison with modern writers. (To this we 

 shall return.) Pliny, on the other hand, 



" though he lived so much later, was an eager listener to 

 all old women's tales. . . . The vastness of his own 

 compilations, and his perpetual industry in noting any 

 circumstances of interest connected with Natural History, 

 smothered his judgment. He had neither time to sift 

 facts nor to weigh the authority to be attached to the 

 statements of other authors ; and these defects leave his 

 great ' Natural History' a rtcdis indigesiaque moles which 

 compares unfavourably with the more exact and pains- 

 taking work of Aristotle." 



It is a pity that Virgil is usually quoted in Dryden's 

 translation (of whose defects Mr. Watkins is himself not 

 unaware) ; for this rendering hopelessly obscures the 

 quite unique power possessed by Virgil of calling up — 

 often by a single word or line — inimitable pictures of 

 external nature, whether scenery or animal life. 



The book contains chapters on dogs, cats, owls, pygmies, 

 elephants, horses, gardens, roses, wolves, fish, oysters 

 and pearls. In a chapter on mythical animals there is a 

 neat discrimination of the causes and characteristics of 

 the animal folk-lore of several early peoples. Homeric 

 and Virgilian natural history receive separate treatment ; 

 and a specially interesting portion of the work deals with 

 the Romans as introducers into Britain and acclimatisers 

 of a number of well-known animals and plants. We 

 should like to see a fuller account of the influence on 

 our fauna and flora of the periods marked respectively 

 by the Roman occupation, the influx of monks from the 

 continent, and the return of the Crusaders from the East, 

 to all of which our author believes we can trace the 

 introduction of many species. With the mention of a 

 chapter on " Hunting among the Ancients," we may 

 pass to Mr. Dakyns' translation of the Cynegeticus of 

 Xenophon. This is hardly the place for a long notice of 

 this work. Suffice it to say that it contains the same 

 kind of matter as we should expect to find in a volume 

 of the Badminton Library dealing with the same subjects 

 — the hunting and tracking of hares with dogs and nets, 

 and the chase and trapping of deer. The habits of the 

 hare, the training, breeding points and management of 

 dogs, and the functions of the keeper, are very fully 

 treated ; incidentally, too, precepts of sporting etiquette 

 are introduced, e.g. the following : 



" Here it should be added that the sportsman, who 

 finds himself on cultivated lands should rigidly keep his 

 hands off the fruits of the season, and leave springs and 

 rivers alone. To meddle with them is ugly and base " 



