394 APPENDIX. 



He was born at Stagira, in Macedonia, 384 years before Christ ; his 

 father, whose name was Nicomachus, was physician to Amyntas, father 

 to Philip, and belonged to a branch of the Asclepiades. He at first 

 studied medicine under his father. At the age of eighteen, being left an 

 orphan, he went to Athens, where he subsisted by the sale of drugs, 

 which obtained for him in that city the name of pharmacopolist. He 

 attended the lectures of Plato, and he himself opened a school some time 

 before the death of his master. Philip appointed him in 356 before 

 Christ, to be the preceptor of his son Alexander; and war being declared 

 between Philip and Athens, in 346, A. C. he quitted that city, and took 

 refuge at the court of Hermias, prince of Atarna, in Mycium. This prince 

 having been betrayed and murdered by the Persians, Aristotle married 

 his sister. Alexander was confided to his care at the age of thirteen, in 

 345, A. C. It is thought that he followed his pupil in his expedition as 

 far as Egypt. In 331, A. C. he returned to Athens, and re-opened his 

 school in Lycia. After the death of Alexander, which took place in 324, 

 A C, the demagogues, seconded by the sophists and platonics, accused 

 him of impiety ; and, to spare the Athenians a second attack against 

 philosophy, he retired with Iris disciples into Eubea, where he died in 

 322, A. C, aged sixty-three. 



Here Cuvier makes a quotation from Aristotle on the fishes, which he 

 (Cuvier) considers to be a perfect master-piece. We shall translate it, 

 merely informing the reader that he is reading only a description of what 

 Cuvier found in several places in Aristotle's works. 



The neck is wanted; their tail is continued with the body, except in the 

 rays, where it is long and thin : they have neither hands, feet, scrotum, 

 virile member, nor mammilla (female breast) ; they ought to be distin- 

 guished from marine animals, which produce little ones alive, such as 

 the Dolphin, whose sucking breasts are concealed near the sinuses of 

 the vulva. 



The special character of true fishes consists in their gills and fins : the 

 majority of them have four fins; but those of an elongated form, as the 

 eels, have only two. Some, as the murena, are entirely without them. 

 The rays swim with the whole of their body enlarged. The gills are 

 sometimes furnished with an operculum, sometimes they are without it ; 

 and this is the case in cartilaginous fishes : in some they are simple, in 

 others double. It is remarkable that the sword-fish has eight gills on 

 each side ; each of these gills is divided into two combs. No fish has 

 either hair or feathers; the greater part are covered with scales, some 

 with a rough ot smooth skin. Their tongue is hard, frequently armed 

 with teeth ; sometimes so adherent, that they appear to be mantled, and 

 this is on account of their being obliged to swallow rapidly ; it is for 

 the same reason that their teeth are generally crooked. 



Their eyes want eyelids. We cannot see either their ears or nostrils, 

 for what is in the place of the nostrils is only a blind cavity. They have 

 nevertheless the faculty of taste, smell, and hearing; as the author proves 

 from numerous experiments. All of them have blood: all the scaly 

 ones have eggs ; but the cartilaginous, if we except the lophius, bring 

 forth living spawn. They have all a heart, a liver, and a gall bladder ; 

 and in this respect he enters into very particular and true details upon 

 the biliary vesicules of some fishes, amongst which is the- amnia ; but 

 he is mistaken in refusing kidnies and a bladder to fishes. 



Their intestines vary very much; there are some, such as the mullets, 

 which have a fleshy gizzard like birds; others have scarcely any apparent 

 stomach. Blind appendices adhere near to their stomach, they are very 

 numerous in some, but much less so in others. There are even some 

 which are entirely without them, as in the greater pail of the cartilaginous 

 fishes. 



