GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE 



blood in the white of the egg. This point 

 beats and moves as though endowed with Kfe, 

 and from it two vein-ducts with blood in them 

 trend in a convoluted course; and a membrane 

 carrying bloody fibres now envelops the yolk, 

 leading off from the vein-ducts. A Httle after- 

 wards the body is differentiated, at first very 

 small and white. The head is clearly distin- 

 guished, and in it the eyes, swollen out to a 

 great extent, . . ." ^^ 



Without carrying further our citation on the 

 chick, we may remark that Aristotle saw all 

 that can be seen without a microscope. His 

 description of the gestation of the placental 

 sharks makes too difficult a matter for a lay- 

 man to set forth for other laymen. I will 

 borrow the account given by an Aristotelian 

 scholar who is himself a biologist. 



" There is perhaps no chapter in the His- 

 toria Animalmm more attractive to the anato- 

 mist than one which deals with the anatomy 

 and mode of reproduction of the cartilaginous 

 fishes, the sharks and rays, a chapter which 

 moved to admiration that prince of anatomists, 

 Johannes Miiller. The latter wrote a volume 

 [Ueber den glatten Hai des Aristoteles, Berlin, 

 1842] on the text of a page of Aristotle, a page 



[56] 



