SHOULD BE READ. 89 



Aristotle or Pliny we must use our own light, 

 that which modern science affords. 



AMICUS. As, for instance, when the former 

 states that the eel is of no sex ; that it has not 

 its origin from an egg, but is of spontaneous 

 evolution from mud aided by rain ; or, when 

 the latter adduces, under the proposition, 

 qucedam gignuntur ex non genitis, that the eel 

 is produced from filaments detached from 

 the surface of an old eel, by the rubbing itself 

 against a rock in the sea, the filaments thus 

 abraded becoming young eels. 



PISCATOK. The instance you give is a 

 glaring one. But remember, it is only very 

 recently that the true mode of the produc- 

 tion of the eel has been ascertained. I 

 can recollect when as loose ideas nearly 

 as those of Aristotle and Pliny were enter- 

 tained respecting this then mysterious fish, 

 and by naturalists and physiologists of emi- 

 nence. One advantage afforded by consulting 

 such works as those we are speaking of, be- 

 longing to the remote past, is that they bring 

 strongly before us the state and quality of 

 knowledge of the times in which they were 

 written ; and are doubly instructive, as not only 



