XU INTRODUCTION. 



body; these and the like are strange blunders, however they originated. 

 This much, however, seems to me beyond question : these were not 

 the personal observations of the same man who had noted the heart 

 beating in the embryonic chick as a " punctum saliens " on the third 

 1^ day of incubation ; who haif^distinguished the allantoidean development 

 A \of birds ^nd reptiles from the non-allantoidean development of fishes ; 

 'who had"unravelled with fair accuracy the arrangement of the bronchial 

 tubes and^their relation to the pulmonary blood-vessels ; and who had 

 jnot only-^ven zoological and anatomical details concerning the cepha- 

 lopods, which both Cuvier and Owen regard as " truly astonishing," but 

 had described nine species of them " with so much precision and happy 

 a selection of their distinctive characters as to enable modern naturalists 

 to identify pretty nearly all."^ 



Is it possible to believe that the same eye that had distinguished 

 the cetacea from the fishes, that had detected their hidden mammse, 

 discovered their lungs, and recognised the distinct character of their 

 bones, should have been so blind as to fancy that the mouth of these 

 animals was on the under surface of the body? Although a statement 

 to this effect occurs twice over in the Greek text, yet it is to me as 

 incredible that it should have been actually made by Aristotle, as it 

 would be that Professor Huxley should make a similarly palpable mis- 

 statement about an animal with which he was perfectly familiar. If it 

 Tbe asked how we can account for the presence of the erroneous state- 

 Vment in the text, we have not to go far for, at any rate, a very possible 

 explanation. We have only to remember the strange vicissitudes to which 

 the original manuscripts of Aristotle's treatises are said to have been sub- 

 jected. Hidden underground in the little town of Scepsis, to save them 

 from the hands of the kings of Pergamus, who were then collecting books 

 to form their famous library, and who, in so doing, apparently paid but 

 little regard to the rights of individual owners, they were left for the 

 better part of two centuries to moulder in the damp, "blattarum et 

 tinearum epulae ; " and when they were at last again brought to light, 

 fell into the hands of Apellicon of Teos, a man who, as Strabo says, 

 was a lover of books rather than a philosopher, and who felt no scruples 

 in correcting what had become worm-eaten, and supplying what was 

 defective or illegible.'' To what extent this corruption of the very 

 fountain head took place, we have now absolutely no means whatsoever 

 of ascertaining. We are, however, I think, justified in assuming with 

 i much confidence that such palpable absurdi^ties. is the one which has 

 f^ I just been mentioned were due to this B acrilegiou s interference with the 

 I text, and should be put not to the account of Aristotle, but to that of 

 the incompetent Apellicon, or his fellow transcribers and emendators. 

 ' Todd's Cyclop, i. 561. - Grote's Aiist. i. 51. 



