IV PEEFACE. 



rate observations, are probably sufficient to account for the 

 correct knowledge of the history of animals displayed 

 throughout the work. 



It is right, perhaps, to observe in this place, that Dr. 

 Smith, in his Dictionary of Biography, speaks of the ' His- 

 tory of Animals ' as partly the result of the royal liberality 

 of Alexander ; and doubtless Aristotle would gladly have 

 introduced into his work any fresh materials which might 

 have been made available to him either during his residence 

 at the Macedonian court, or by the subsequent victories of 

 Alexander in the East, if the information so obtained had 

 reached Athens in sufficient time to be incorporated. But 

 in the first instance he would naturally use the mate- 

 rials ready to his hand in the works of his predecessors, 

 and these were not few. The animals also which he de- 

 scribes are principally those of Greece and of the countries 

 with which the enterprising Greeks had frequent and com- 

 mercial intercourse. He says little of the animals of the 

 interior of Asia and of India, and speaks very cautiously of 

 such as he does mention ; and one who quotes his authorities 

 so freely would hardly have failed to notice the sources of 

 his information. 



The study, or at least the knowledge of the classification 

 of animals appears to have been carefully pursued in the 

 earliest period of man's history. The oldest records that 

 we possess contain abundant notices of the peculiarities of 

 animals. The Mosaic law abounds in them, in its distinc- 

 tions between the clean and the unclean, a distinction not 

 then first established, but of the most remote antiquity. 

 Indeed it could hardly be otherwise than that men engaged 

 in the pursuits of agriculture and the chase should study 

 the habits of the animals that were valuable to them, as well 

 as those which were injurious. A study thus commenced 



