ARISTOTLE. 



ARISTOTELIAN PERIOD. 



WHEN we leave prehistoric ground, and come to the 

 period of written records, we find ample evidence that 

 the ancients were close observers of nature, although 

 natural history, as a science, had as yet no existence. 

 No reader of the Old Testament can fail to admire the 

 beauty, the fitness, and the power of many of the epi- 

 thets therein applied to animals. An eminent German 

 critic (Gervinus) has remarked, very unjustly, that the 

 ancients had no pleasure in nature ; but the writings of 

 Homer, as of all great poets, are by no means without 

 those felicitous phrases descriptive of animals, which 



