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March 16, 1882] 
Ovipara. a. With perfect ovum. 4. Birds; 5. Quadru- 
peds and Apoda (Reptiles and Amphibia). 8. With im- 
perfect ovum. 6. Fishes. , 
II. Bloodless Animals (Invertebrata). a, With imper- 
fect ovum. 7. Malacia (Cephalopods). 8. Malacostraca 
(Crustacea), §. With scolex. 9. Insecta (remaining 
Arthropoda. and some Vermes). y. With generative 
slime ; buds; or spontaneous generation. 10. Ostraco- 
derma or Testacea (Mollusca excepting Cephalopods). 
6. With spontaneous generation only. 11. (Zoophytes). 
After this the text of Aristotle follows in four books, 
preceded by a Synopsis, and succeeded by the Notes, to 
which we have already directed attention. How excel- 
lently the notes are used to illustrate the text may be 
shown by one or two quotations. In Book III. Chap. V. 
Aristotle describes “that in animals of great size the heart 
has three cavities; in smaller animals two; and in all at 
least one.” 
“The reason for this, as already stated, is that there 
must be some place in the heart to serve as a receptacle 
for first blood. But inasmuch as the main blood vessels 
are two in number, namely, the so-called great vessel and 
the aorta, each of which is the origin of other vessels ; 
inasmuch moreover as these two vessels present diffi~ 
culties, it is of advantage that they also shall themselves 
have distinct origins. This advantage will be obtained if 
each side have its own blood and the blood of one side be 
kept separate from that of the other.” 
So much for the text. The notes in the most useful 
manner explain away one attributed error by Aristotle, 
while they remove one apparent error. They show that 
the statement universally made by writers on physiology 
that up to the time of Galen all philosophers supposed 
that the arteries contained nothing but air is incorrect, in- 
asmuch as the text shows that Aristotle knew perfectly well 
that the arteries contain blood. They show again that 
Aristotle’s apparently erroneous view about the cavities of 
the heart does not prove him ignorant. The three cavi- 
ties he refers to are the right ventricle, the left ventricle, 
and the left auricle. He omitted the right auricle simply 
because he looked on it as a venous sinus, a part, not of 
the heart, but of the great vein, zz. superior and inferior 
venee cave. That he so regarded it is plain from his 
always speaking of the superior and inferior venz cave 
as forming a single vessel, not two distinct vessels, and 
that the heart appears very much like a part of the great 
vein, being interposed between its upper and lower 
divisions. 
Turning to another note bearing on a different, and, as 
we should now say, a chemical subject, we are offered an 
insight into the views of the philosopher, on the compo- 
sition of natural substances. In the first chapter of the 
second book, the philosopher, in speaking of composition, 
says that there are three degrees of composition; and 
that the first of these, aS all will allow, is out of what 
some call the elements, such as air, earth, water, fire. 
Perhaps, however, he adds, it would be more accurate to 
say composition out of the elementary forces ; nor indeed 
out of all these, but of a limited number of them. With 
this observation as a text, Dr. Ogle explains that Aristotle 
in his other works is seen not only to look upon compounds 
as combinations of elements, but indeed to have a clear 
conception of the distinction between chemical combina- 
tionand mere mixture; “ for of the former he says that the 
NATURE 
Ado 
combining substances disappear with their properties, and 
a new substance with new properties arises from their 
unification. In the latter, the mixed substances remain 
with all their properties, and it is merely the imperfection 
of our vision which prevents us from seeing the particles 
of each lying side by side, and separate. Had we the 
eyes of Lynceus, we should do so, however intimate the 
mixture might be.” This knowledge is remarkable, 
though it may not be complete, or may not be completely 
expressed. It suggests an anxious desire to know more of 
the sources of knowledge from whence this master drew 
his chemical learning. 
One more illustration from these useful notes belongs 
to the domain of natural history, and is connected ina 
way, singularly interesting, with history in a more general 
sense. Speaking in Book III. Chapter II. of the right 
and left organs of the bodies of animals, Aristotle says 
that the horns of animals are, in the great majority of 
cases, twoin number. There are, however, exceptions, 
he thinks, to this rule in respect to the horns, for there 
are some that have but a single horn—the Dryx and the 
so-called Indian Ass. In such animals the horn is set in 
the centre of the head ;’ for, as the middle belungs equally 
to both extremes, this arrangement is the one that comes 
nearest to each side having its own horn. Dr. Ogle, in 
his note on this passage, points out that the account of 
the Indian Ass, with a solid hoof and a single horn, was 
taken by Aristotle from Ctesias, and that it has been 
plausibly conjectured that the Indian Rhinoceros (2. z77- 
cornis) is the animal meant ; for though, he says, this 
animal has three toes, they are so indistinctly separated 
that the real character of the foot might easily escape a 
casual observer. At the same time he observes that on 
the obelisk of Nimroud, made long before the time of 
Ctesias, there is represented a rhinoceros with feet dis- 
tinctly divided into toes. An argument on the side of 
this supposed identification is, he adds, furnished by the 
fact that the horn of the Indian Ass was supposed to have 
certain magical powers, so that a cup made from it gave 
the drinker immunity from poison, as is related by 
Philostratus in his life of Apollonius; ‘whilst similar 
virtues are assigned, in the East, to rhinoceros horn, even 
in the present day. If the one-horned ass of India be 
the RAinoceros Unicornis, may not the asses with horns 
named by Herodotus as among the animals of Lybia, be 
the twe-horned Rhinocerotes of Africa ? 
We have selected three illustrations of text and notes, 
one from anatomy proper, another from chemistry, a 
third from natural history, for the purpose of giving the 
reader a taste of the useful and most interesting study that 
lies before him when he takes up’ this book. We have 
rarely seen a volume which so intimately connects the 
science of the remote past with the science of the present, 
and which bridges over the distance as this book does. If 
there be a fault in it, it is that of condensation. In trying 
to compress and compress, and again compress, Dr. Ogle 
gets into the mode of using the first letter of the name of 
his author or book in his references; he also, for the 
same reason, in his note references, omits the page of the 
volume, and, as he does not supply a complete key to his 
method, he is sometimes, like ‘“‘ Bradshaw,” rather vexa- 
tious, especially when his follower is anxious to discover 
quickly how to travel with facility from one point to 
