April 24, 1913] 



NATURE 



markable phenomena bearing directly on the nature 

 of enhanced lines in general, which he describes _ in 

 the present communication. Using larger dispersion 

 than in his former experiments, ana employing thinner 

 tubes in the furnace, he ran the furnace until the 

 tube wore thin with the strong vaporisation of the 

 carbon, and ultimately broke. It was near this break- 

 ing period that the important observations were made. 

 The description of the experiments is given very 

 fully in the paper, and is finely illustrated with repro- 

 ductions of some of the spectra obtained, but here 

 only the leading features of the research can 

 be stated. The titanium enhanced lines appear in the 

 regular furnace spectrum for temperatures probably 

 somewhat higher than 2000 C, but are very faint 

 compared with the arc lines. At still higher tempera- 

 tures, the furnace conditions still existing, there is 

 an indication of a slight increase in the relative 

 strength of the enhanced lines. At the stage^ when 

 the furnace tube burns through, resulting in the 

 formation of a low-voltage arc, the consumption of 

 electrical energy at the point being very large, the 

 enhanced lines of titanium and the spark line A4267 of 

 carbon appear with an intensity usually attainable 

 only in powerful sparks. Photographs taken with the 

 slit" across the entire image of the tube's interior show 

 that the relative strength of the enhanced lines is 

 much greater in the centre of the tube than near the 

 wall the effect being very pronounced in the case of 

 the carbon spark line. Mr. King also directs atten- 

 tion to the important observation that the vapour in 

 the centre of the broken tube shows a tendency to give 

 a line farther to the red than near the wall, this being 

 shown in the increasing dissymmetry of the lines from 

 the end towards the middle. This effect, he points 

 out, is in harmony with the action of the condensed 

 spark, but can scarcely, in the case of the furnace 

 lines, be ascribed to pressure. 



ARISTOTLE AS A NATURALIST.^ 

 \ MONG the isles of Greece there is a certain 

 f\ island, insula nobilis et amoena, which Aristotle 

 knew well. It lies on the Asian side, between the 

 Troad and the Ionian coast, and far into its bosom, 

 by the little town of Pyrrha, runs a broad and sheltered 

 lagoon. It is the isl'and of Lesbos. Here Aristotle 

 came and spent two years of his life, in middle age, 

 bringing his princess-bride from the petty court ot a 

 little neighbouring State where he had already spent 

 three years. It was just before he went to Macedon 

 to teach Alexander; it was ten years later that he 

 went back to Athens to begin teaching in the Lyceum. 

 Now in the "Natural History," references to places 

 in Greece proper are very few indeed; there is much 

 more frequent mention of places on the northern and 

 eastern coasts of the .ffigean, from Aristotle's own 

 homeland down to the Carian coast; and to places 

 in and round that island of Lesbos or Mytilene,_ a 

 whole cluster of Aristotle's statements and descrip- 

 tions refer. Here, for instance, Aristotle mentions a 

 peculiarity of the deer on a neighbouring islet, of the 

 weasels bv the wayside bv another island town. He 

 speaks of 'the big purple Murex shells at Cape Lecturn, 

 and of the different sorts of sponges found on the 

 landward and the seaward side of Cape Malia. but 

 it is to the lagoon at Pvrrha that Aristotle oftenest 

 alludes Here were starfish, in such abundance as to 

 be a pest to the fishermen ; here the scallops had been 

 exterminated bv a period of drought, and by the con- 

 tinual working of the fishermen's dredge; here the 

 sea-urchins come into season in the winter time, an 



lertiire delivered at Oxford on February 14 

 , C.B. 



NO. 226g, VOL. 91] 



1 From the Herbert Spen 

 by Prof. D'Arcy W. Thorn; 



unusual circumstance. Here among the cuttlefishes 

 was found no octopus, either of the common or of the 

 muskv kind; here was no parrot-wrasse, nor any 

 kind of spiny fish, nor sea-crawfish, nor the spotted 

 nor the spiny dog-fish; and, again, from this lagoon, 

 all the fishes, save only a little gudgeon, migrated 

 seaward to breed. And though with no special appli- 

 cation to the island, but only to the Asiatic coast in 

 general, I may add that the chameleon, which is 

 the subject of one of Aristotle's most perfect and 

 minute investigations, is here comparatively common, 

 but is not known to occur in Greece at all. 



I take it then as probable, or even proven, that an 

 important part of Aristotle's work in natural history 

 was done upon the Asiatic coast, and in and near to 

 Mitylene. He will be a lucky naturalist who shall go 

 some day and spend a quiet summer by that calm 

 lagoon find there all the natural wealth otroov Ato-flos 

 ivros iepyet, and have around his feet the 

 creatures that Aristotle loved and knew. Moreover, 

 it follows for certain, if all this be true, that Aris- 

 totle's biological studies preceded his more strictly 

 philosophical work; and it is of no small importance 

 that we should be (so far as possible) assured of this, 

 when we speculate upon the influence of his biology 

 on his philosophy. 



Aristotle is no tyro in biology. When he writes 

 upon mechanics or on physics, we read him with 

 difficulty : his ways are not our ways ; his explanations 

 seem laboured ; his science has an archaic look, as it 

 were coming from another world to ours, a world 

 before Galileo. Speaking with all diffidence, I have 

 my doubts as to his mathematics. In spite ot a 

 certain formidable passage in the " Ethics," where we 

 have a sort of ethica more geometneo demonstrate!, 

 favourite use of the equality of the angles of a 

 triangle to four right angles, as an example of proof 

 indisputable, in spite even of his treatise, De Lineis 

 Insecabilibus," I am tempted to suspect that he some- 

 times passed shyly beneath the superscription over 

 Plato's door. ,, 



But he was, and is, a very great naturalist. When 

 he treats of natural history, his language is our 

 language, and his methods and his problems are well- 

 nigh identical with our own. He had familiar know- 

 ledge of a thousand varied forms of life, of bird, and 

 bea & st, and plant, and creeping thing : he was careful 

 to note their least details of outward structure, and 

 curious to probe by dissection into their parts within. 

 He studied the metamorphoses of gnat and butterfly, 

 and opened the bird's egg to find the mystery of 

 incipient life in the developing chick. He recognised 

 rrreat problems of biology that are still ours to-day, 

 problems of heredity, of sex, of nutrition and growth, 

 of adaptation, of the struggle for existence, of the 

 orderly sequence of nature's plan. Above all, he was 

 a student of life itself. If he was a learned anatomist, 

 a great student of the dead, still more was he a lover 

 of the living. Evermore his world is in movement. 

 The seed is growing, the heart beating, the frame 

 breathing. The ways and habits of living things must 

 be known : how they work and play, love and hate, 

 feed and procreate, rear and tend their young ; whether 

 thev dwell solitary, or in more and more organised 

 companies and societies. All such things appeal to 

 his imagination and his diligence. Even his anatomy 

 becomes at once an anatomia ammata, as Haller, 

 poet and physiologist, was wont to describe the science 

 to which he gave the name of physiology. This atti- 

 tude towardslife, such knowledge got thereby, after- 

 wards helped to shape and mould Aristotle s philo- 



S °I have no reason to suppose that the study of 

 biology "maketh a man wise," but I am sure it helped 



