6 NATURAL HISTORY. 



show that their author was an acute observer of living 

 beings. It need not be denied that the branches of 

 learning most cultivated by the classical nations were 

 those of rhetoric and logic, grammar, geometry, and 

 metaphysics ; and that what we now know as the ' natural 

 sciences' received comparatively little attention, even 

 from the most learned of the Latin and Greek philoso- 

 phers, while the fine arts were the object of the most 

 successful and the most general pursuit. Nevertheless, 

 Aristotle,* the father of the modern science of zoology, 

 was a Greek, trained in the schools of the Greek 

 philosophy, and as eminent in those purely speculative 

 subjects in which the Greek intellect had always 

 delighted, as he was in the concrete science of natural 

 history. 



As there was no ' science,' properly so called, of 

 natural history anterior to the time of Aristotle, and as 

 he may be regarded as the first who gave a systematic 

 form to zoology, it will be well to consider briefly the 

 condition in which this great philosopher left the science 

 which he founded. This is the more needful, as he had 

 no successor, and, so far as the progress of zoology was 

 concerned, might just as well have lived and worked 

 seventeen or eighteen centuries later than the reign of 

 Alexander the Great. However minute may have been 



* Aristotle was born at Stagira, in the year 384 B.C. He wrote his great work 

 on the ' History of Animals' (Hty rat, Zuot, 'I<rro^) about 340 B.C. As regards the 

 nature and value of the scientific writings of Aristotle, the following may be 

 consulted : ' Aristoteles Thierkunde,' Jiirgen Bona Meyer, 1855 ; 'Life and Analysis 

 of the Scientific Writings of Aristotle,' George Henry Lewes, 1864 ; ' Leben, 

 Schriften und Schuler des Aristoteles,' Stahr, 1832 ; ' Geschichte der Zoologie," 

 Victor Carus, 1872. Short popular memoirs of the life and writings of Aristotle are 

 those of Macgillivray ('Edinburgh Cabinet Library,' vol. xvi. 1834), and of the 

 Rev. Andrew Crichton ('Naturalists' Library,' vol. iii. 1843). 



