aes 
118 
NATURE 
[Hune 12, 1843 q 
which he had had an opportunity of examining. He did 
not obtain even this modest instrument until May 1638, 
about a year before Milton viewed the moon through 
“the optic glass” of “the Tuscan artist”: 
* At evening from the top of Plsole, 
Or from Valdar no, to descry new lands, ' 
Rivers or mountains in her spotty globe.” 
The “mute inglorious Miltons” of Toxteth seem not to 
have been wholly incurious respecting the researches of 
their fellow villager, who speaks in another letter of having 
endeavoured to exhibit Venus in her crescent phase to 
“sundry bystanders,” who however were unable to discern 
the phenomenon owing to their inexperience in the use 
of the instrument. The possession of a telescope may 
have stimulated his desire to become acquainted with the 
writings of its inventor. Four months later we find him 
possessed of Galileo’s dialogue on the “System of the 
Universe,” and anxious to procure his ‘“‘ Nuncius Side- 
reus,” and treatise on the Solar Spots. He had previously 
speculated upon the exact period of the creation of the 
world, which he sought to determine by a combination 
of seta and ‘scriptural data ; and upon the origin 
of comets, which he supposed to be emitted from the sun. 
The phenomena of the planetary aphelion and perihelion 
had likewise engaged his attention, and elicited remarks 
which almost seem prophetic of the great discovery of 
Sir Isaac Newton. In observing the setting sun he had 
noticed a raggedness of the margin, which he rightly 
attributed to atmospheric conditions. During the last 
three months of his life, when unable to bestow time on 
astronomical research, he commenced an attentive study 
of the irregularities of the tides, from which he hoped to 
obtain a demonstration of the rotation of the earth. The 
Lancashire coast, where the recess of the tide is very 
considerable, is highly fayourable to similar observa- 
tions, 
(To be continued.) 
CARUS’S BISTORY OF ZOOLOGY 
Geschichte der Zoologie bis auf Foh. Miller und 
Charles Darwin, von J. Victor Carus. Pp. 739. 
(Miinchen, 1872.) 
i lia of the most characteristic qualities of the present 
time are scepticism and sympathy ; and by a happy 
combination of the ability to investigate statements 
instead of taking them on trust, and the power of realising 
past states of knowledge and of feeling, a most important 
advance has been made in history. But the historical 
method is not confined to what is commonly so called. 
It has been applied to philology and philosophy, and has 
reformed both, while even in the physical sciences its 
importance is now fully recognised. It is true that a 
science like Zoology, which deals entirely with objective 
facts, is more independent of history than.some others, 
and its history does not realiy begin till the seventeenth 
century. But aspart of the history of the human mind, 
it will always be important to study the sciences of pre- 
scientific ages, and when we meet with such a master-mind 
s that of Aristotle, whatever he wrote becomes of the 
highest interest because it was his. 
The work before us, by the son of the late eminent 
zoologist of the same name,* is one of the series under- 
* ‘the accomplished author himself is now lecturing in Edinburgh as Prof. 
W. Thomson's substitute, 
taken by command of the late King of Bavaria, and 
published by a Historical Commission of the Royal 
Academy of Sciences in Munich, It embraces the history 
of the whole body of science in Germany, and the volumes 
which have already appeared have been written by men 
of high eminence in their several departments. 
Fortunately, however, Prof. Carus does not at all confine 
himself to Germany,so that the present work is an 
attempt at a complete history of zoology, from the earliest 
to the present time. It naturally divides itself into two 
parts, the first treating of what may be called pre-scientific 
zoolozy, which is only of general historical interest, the 
second tracing the develop nent of zoology, as a science 
of observation and experiment, from .its foundation by 
Ray and Linnzus. These two sections are handled on 
a very different scale, for the former occupies more than 
half the book, and is therefore sufficiently minute, while 
the whole history of modern zoology is compressed into 
three hundred pages. The consequence is that, while 
accurate as to facts, the latter part is often little but a list 
of names and dates. 
We shall therefore simply direct the attention of zoolo- 
gists to the second portion of Prof. Carus’s history as con- 
venient and well-arranged for reference, and dwell here 
on his detailed account of the less known progress made 
in ancient and medizval times towards a knowledge of 
the varieties and structure of animals. 
The first chapter treats of the earliest animals known 
to man, including those domesticated in prehistoric times. 
The names of the Ox, Sheep, Goat, Pig, Dog, Horse, and 
Goose, occur in allied forms in most of the Indo-European 
languages, and their bones are found among the dust- 
heaps of the earliest race of men known. The Cat 
(atNoupos), though domesticated in Egypt, was not a 
household animal till much later in Western Europe: 
the “cat” of the Greeks and Romans (yeA7) being 
almost certainly the whitebreasted beech-marten (Jfarfes 
foina) a conclusion learnedly and perspicuously esta- 
blished by Prof, Rolleston in’ a paper published in the 
Fournal of Anatomy and Physiology, for November 1867. 
But the Flea and the Louse appear to have been familiar 
from the earliest times, and Mice, Flies, and Worms are 
also among the first named by man. To the same primi- 
tive group belong the Bear, the Beaver, which lived in 
English rivers up to comparatively recent times, and the 
Wolf and Fox, the names of which (vz/Jes, Wolf) have 
evidently been confounded. 
After a short account of the part taken by animals in 
early mythology and in the fables common to the Indo- 
European nations—a chapter which might have been with 
advantage enlarged from the pages of Grimm, D sent, 
and Link—our author enumerates the domestic animals 
known in classical times, which include, beside those 
already mentioned, the Camel (confounded with the 
elephant during the Middle ages), the common Fowl 
(pus mepotx) Aristoph., Av. 485), which was introduced 
from the East between the date of Homer and Hesiod 
and that of Aischylus, the Chenalopex, probably iden- 
tical with our sheldrake (Zadorna vulpanser), pigeons of 
various breeds, and birds of prey which were used for 
hawking. The list of wild animals was greatly increased 
by the games of the Roman circus, and many, like the 
Hippopotamus, Rhinoceros, and Giraffe were better 
