PROGRESS OF ICHTHYOLOGY. 393 



him. The works of his on Natural History which 

 remain to us are, nine Books Of the History of 

 Animals, four, On the Parts of Animals, five, On 

 the Generation of Animals, one, On the Going of 

 Animals, one, Of the Sensations, and the Organs 

 of them, one, On Sleeping and Waking, one, On the 

 Motion of Animals, one, On the Length and Short- 

 ness of Life, one, On Youth and Old Age, one, On 

 Life and Death, one, On Respiration. The know- 

 ledge of the external and internal conformation of 

 animals, their habits, instincts, and uses, which 

 Aristotle displays in these works, is spoken of as 

 something wonderful even to the naturalists of our 

 own time. And he may be taken as a sufficient 

 representative of the whole of the period of which 

 we speak ; for he is, says Cuvier 2 , not only the first, 

 but the only one of the ancients who has treated 

 of the natural history of fishes (the province to 

 which we now confine ourselves,) in a scientific 

 point of view, and in a way which shows genius. 



We may pass over, therefore, the other ancient 

 authors from whose writings Cuvier, with great 

 learning and sagacity, has levied contributions to 

 the history of ichthyology ; as Theophrastus, Ovid, 

 Pliny, Oppian, Athena3iis, ^Elian, Ausonius, Galen. 

 We may, too, leave unnoticed the compilers of the 

 middle ages, who did little but abstract and dis- 

 figure the portions of natural history which they 

 found in the ancients. Ichthyological, like other 

 Cuv. p. 18. 



