INTRODUCTION. Xlll 



employed above a thousand persons in col- 

 lecting and transmitting to him specimens 

 from every part of the animal kingdom. 

 ARISTOTLE is therefore to be regarded as 

 having laid the first foundation of our know- 

 ledge of that kingdom. He must likewise 

 have derived great advantages from the dis- 

 coveries and observations of preceding wri- 

 ters, to whose works he would probably have 

 easy access. No individual naturalist could, 

 without such assistance, have produced so 

 valuable and extensive a work on natural sci- 

 ence as that which Aristotle has bequeathed 

 to posterity. And though the opinions of 

 himself and his contemporaries have been 

 transmitted to us in an imperfect manner, 

 and abound in errors, still he and his editor 

 THEOPHRASTUS may be regarded as the only 

 philosophical naturalists of antiquity, whose 

 labours and discoverie spresent us with any 

 portion of satisfactory knowledge. 



The observations of Aristotle on the subject 

 of the honey-bee were afterwards " embel- 

 lished and invested with a species of divinity, 

 by the matchless pen of VIRGIL," in his 

 fourth Georgic; and it excites feelings of 

 b5 



