XXV INTRODUCTION. 



which might not easily have been communicated by others, while some 

 remarks are made which seem to me much more compatible with the 

 latter view than with the former. As regards the other three animals, it is 

 astonishing how Cuvier can speak of their being so accurately described 

 as to imply actual examination. They are only mentioned once, 

 all together, in a few clauses (H. A. ii. i, 20, 21, 22); just as they 

 might be if Aristotle were citing a passage of a letter from his pupil 

 Callisthenes, who accompanied Alexander, and with whom Cuvier him- 

 self supposes Aristotle to have kept up a continuous correspondence.^ 

 The hippelaphus may be identified with much probability, though no 

 actual certainty, with the nylghau, and the wild oxen are undoubtedly 

 buffaloes. But the details given in this passage are quite insufficient to 

 determine what animal is meant by the pardium or hippardium ; and to 

 prove this it is enough to say that Cuvier, who must have been speaking 

 at second-hand, and relying upon some utterly untrustworthy authority, 

 actually identifies it with the "tigre chasseur," or cheetah, whereas 

 it is said by Aristotle to have a cloven hoof and horns, in this re- 

 sembling the hippelaphus, and has been supposed by some to cor- 

 respond to the giraffe ! Cuvier the historian of science is, as I 

 have often found, an authority of very different value from Cuvier the 

 biologist. 



/ Whether Ptolemy Philadelphus, not very many years after Aristotle's 



''death, instituted a museum with a zoological garden attached to it, more 



richly supplied with animals than any that has since existed, as is stated,' 



may be doubtful ; but that no such collection was open to Aristotle is, 



I think, indisputably shown by the utter absence of any allusion to it 



in his treatises. Thus Aristotle, in all probability, had. never, had the 



rppportunity of personally examining any of the larger carnivora, either 



Lalive or dead. The stories of hunters, always prone to exaggeration, 



/ /were the only source of information as to the habits of these animals 



^».in life ; and if a chance skin, hung up in a temple to commemorate 



an escape from a perilous encounter, may perhaps have sometimes 



given a more direct notion of their external aspect, yet the internal 



parts — spirits of wine or other preservatives of organic structures not 



having as yet been discovered — must have been entirely beyond the 



reach of investigation. A hunter, noticing the thick and solid neck 



of the lion and the wolf, jumped to the conclusion that it contained 



but a single bone, and did not hesitate to report as an actual anatomical 



' I do not know on what authority Cuvier makes this probable statement. I presume, 

 however, that he relied on a passage in Simplicius, where it is stated that CaUisthenes 

 fonvarded certain ancient astronomical observations to Aristotle from Babylon. Cf. 

 Simpl. Comment, ex recens. Karstenii, p, 226. 



» Hist. d. Sc. Nat. i. 174. 



