26 AUTHENTICITY OF ANECDOTES 



generalisations, it is only just to the naturalists of classical 

 times of ancient Greece and Eome, for example to point 

 out that one of the results of modern research has been to 

 prove the correctness of observers and recorders who lived 

 centuries before accurate observation or philosophical in- 

 ference is supposed to have existed or to have been developed 

 in the progress of Western civilisation. In certain cases the 

 observations of Aristotle, Herodotus, and Pliny have been 

 laughed and sneered at as incorrect, fanciful, poetical, or 

 mythical, by successive generations of more modern na,tu- 

 ralists among the scientific and ' advanced ' nations of the 

 West. 



Nevertheless, the most recent researches sometimes prove 

 the accuracy of the distinguished Pagan, and the inaccuracy 

 of the less distinguished Christian, naturalists. One of 

 the most remarkable instances of this confirmation of the 

 soundness of the observation and inference of ancient natu- 

 ralists is the corroboration by the late Mr. Moggridge, at 

 Mentone, in the South of France, of the observations made 

 on harvesting ants by Aristotle hundreds of years ago. Mr. 

 Lee's observations at the Brighton Aquarium on the repro- 

 duction of the octopus also confirm those of the noble Greek 

 naturalist and philosopher Aristotle. Countenance at least 

 is given to the well-known ancient fable of Romulus and 

 .Remus by the discovery in India, in recent times, of so-called 

 ' wolf children,' who, whether or not they have been suckled 

 or protected by wolves, have many of the habits of those or 

 other wild animals, as is fully pointed out in another chapter. 1 

 Much ridicule, again, has been expended upon the assertion 

 repeatedly made, and by generations of naturalists as to 

 the * milking* of Aphides and other insects by ants. That it 

 is nevertheless a fact, that certain bees do the same, and 

 that Aphides are by no means the only insects treated as 

 milk kine, has been shown in the pages of ' Nature ' quite 

 recently by observers so competent as Fritz Miiller and 

 Meldola. 



On the other hand, there are many stories in modern 



1 That which treats of the degeneracy or defective development of the 

 human mind. 



