64 ARISTOTLE. 



head is empty. When speaking of the face, he 

 remarks, that persons having a large forehead are of 

 slow intellect, that smallness of that part indicates 

 fickleness, great breadth stupidity, and roundness 

 irascibility. The physiognomists of our day have a 

 different opinion. The neck contains the spine, the 

 gullet, and the arteria (or windpipe). The trunk 

 consists of the breast, the belly, &c. ; — and in this 

 manner he passes over the different ex^ternal regions. 



In describing the brain, he states that all red- 

 blooded animals have that organ, as have also the 

 mollusca, and that in man it is largest and most 

 humid. He had observed its two membranes, as 

 well as the hemispheres and cerebellum ; but he as- 

 serts that it is bloodless, that no veins exist in it, 

 and that it is naturally cold to the touch. He was 

 ignorant of the distribution of the nerves, was not 

 aware that the arteries contain blood, imagined that 

 the heart being connected with the windpipe is in- 

 flated through it, and, in a word, manifests extreme 

 ignorance of every thing that relates to the internal 

 organization. 



Judging from this specimen, the reader may sus- 

 pect that his time would not be profitably employed 

 in separating the few particles of wheat from the 

 great mass of chaff which the writings of Aristotle 

 present to us. Nor must it be concealed that the 

 modern naturalist does not consult his volumes for 

 information, but merely to gratify curiosity. There 

 is to be found, indeed, in the most imperfect of our 

 elementary works on anatomy, whether human or 

 comparative, more knowledge than was probably 

 contained in the Alexandrian library. 



In his second book, he treats more particularly of 



