INTRODUCTION 



of plants a^d the habits of animals, gave names to 

 familiar species, and recognised that while human life 

 4i&s mac : i in common with the life of animals, it has 

 something in common with the life of plants. Abundant 

 traces of an interest in living things are to be found in 

 the oldest records of India, Palestine, and Egypt. Still 

 more interesting, at least to the inhabitants of Western 

 Europe, is the biology of the ancient Greeks. The 

 Greeks were an open-air people, dwelling in a singularly 

 varied country nowhere far removed from the moun- 

 tains or the sea. Intellectually they were distinguished 

 by curiosity, imagination, and a strong taste for 

 reasoning. Hence it is not to be wondered at that 

 natural knowledge should have been widely diffused 

 among them, nor that some of them should have 

 excelled in science. Besides all the rest, the Greeks 

 were a literary people, who have left behind them a 

 copious record of their thoughts and experience. Greek 

 science, and Greek biology in particular, are therefore 

 of peculiar interest and value. 



Greek naturalists in or before the age of Alexander 

 the Great had collected and methodised the lore of 

 the farmer, gardener, hunter, fisherman, herb-gatherer, 

 and physician ; the extant writings of Aristotle and 

 Theophrastus give us some notion of what had been 

 discovered down to that time. 



Aristotle shows a wide knowledge of animals. He 

 dwells upon peculiar instincts, such as the migration of 

 birds, the nest-building of the fish Phycis, the capture of 

 prey by the fish Lophius, the protective discharge of 

 ink by Sepia, and the economy of the hive-bee. He is 

 fond of combining many particular facts into general 

 statements like these : No animal which has wings is 

 without legs ; animals with paired horns have cloven 



