162 COSMOS. 



May not the knowledge of the form and habits of the animals 

 above referred to, and which, for the most part, was comprised 

 in short notices, have been transmitted to Aristotle, independ- 

 ently of the Macedonian campaigns, either from Persia or from 

 Babylon, which was the seat of a widely-extended foreign com- 

 mercial intercourse ? Owing to the utter ignorance that pre- 

 vailed at this time of the preparation of alcohol,* nothing but 



(t. iii., p. 66) considers the reading rrupScov preferable to that of to 

 CTrTrdijdcov. The latter reading would be best interpreted to mean the 

 giratFe, as Pallas also conjectures (Spicileg. Zool., fasc. i., p. 4). If Aris- 

 totle had himself seen the guepard, and not merely heard it described, 

 how could he have failed to notice non-retractile claws in a feline ani- 

 mal ? It is also surprising that Aristotle, who is always so accurate, if, 

 as August Wilhelm von Schlegel maintains, he had a menagerie near 

 his residence at Alliens, and had himself dissected one of the elephants 

 taken at Arbela, should have failed to describe the small opening near 

 the temples of the animal, where, at the rutting season, a strong-smell- 

 ing fluid is secreted, often alluded to by the Indian poets. (Schlegel's 

 Indiscke Bibliothek, bd. i., s. 163-166.) I notice this apparently trifling 

 circumstance thus particularly, because the above-mentioned small aper 

 ture was made known to us from the accounts of Megasthenes, to whom, 

 nevertheless, no one would be led to ascribe anatomical knowledge. 

 (Strabo, lib. xv., p. 704 and 705, Casaub.) I find nothing in the differ- 

 ent zoological works of Aristotle which have come down to us that nec- 

 essarily implies his having had the opportunity of making direct ob- 

 servations on elephants, or of his having dissected any. Although it is 

 most probable that the Hisioria Animalium was completed before Alex- 

 ander's campaigns in Asia Minor, there is undoubtedly a possibility that 

 the work may, as Stahr supposes {Aristotelia, th. ii., s. 98), have con- 

 tinued to receive additions until the end of the author's life, Olymp. 

 114, 3, and therefore three years after the death of Alexander ; but we 

 have no direct evidence on this subject. That which we possess of 

 the correspondence of Aristotle is undoubtedly not genuine (Stahr, th. 

 i., s. 194-208; th. ii., s. 169-234) ; and Schneider says very confidently 

 (Hist, de Animal., t. i., p. xl.), " hoc enim tauquam certissimum sumere 

 mihi licebit, scriptas comitum Alexandri notitias post mortem demum 

 regis fuisse vulgatas." 



* I have elsewhere shown that, although the decomposition of sul- 

 phuret of mercury by distillation is described in Dioscorides (Mat. Med., 

 v. 110, p. 667, Saracen.), the first description of the distillation of a 

 fluid (the distillation of fresh w^ater from sea water) is, however, to be 

 found in the commentary of Alexander of Aphrodisias to Aristotle's 

 work De Meteorol. See my Examen Critique de VHistoire de la Giogra- 

 phie, t. ii., p. 308-316, and Joannis (Philoponi), Grammatici in libra de 

 Generat. et Alexaiidri Aphrod., in Meteorol. Comm., Venet., 1527, p. d7, 

 b. Alexander of Aphrodisias in Caria, the learned commentator of the 

 Meteorologica of Aristotle, lived under Septimius Severus and Caracal- 

 la ; and although he calls chemical apparatuses ;\;vi«:a opyava, yet a 

 passage in Plutarch {De hide et Osir., c. 33) proves that the word Cke- 

 mie, applied by the Greeks to the Egyptian art, is not derived from 

 :j;£6). Hoefer {Histoirc de la Chimie, t. i., p. 91, 195, and 219 ; t. ii.. 

 p. 109). 



