NATURE 



[April 24, 19 1; 



to lead Aristotle on the road to wisdom. Nevertheless 

 he takes occasion to explain, or to excuse, his devotion 

 to this study, alien, seemingly, to the pursuit of 

 philosophy. "Doubtless," he says, "the glory of the 

 heavenly bodies fills us with more delight than we 

 gain from the contemplation of these lowly things; 

 for the sun and stars are born not, neither do they 

 decay, but are eternal and divine. But the heavens 

 are high and afar off, and of celestial things the 

 knowledge that our senses give us is scanty and dim. 

 On the other hand, the living creatures are nigh at 

 hand, and of each and all of them we may gain 

 ample and certain knowledge if we so desire. If a 

 statue please us, shall not the living fill us with 

 delight; all the more if in the spirit of philosophy we 

 search for causes and recognise the evidences of 

 design. Then will nature's purpose and her deep- 

 seated laws be everywhere revealed, all tending in her 

 multitudinous work to one form or another of the 

 beautiful." In somewhat similar words does Bacon 

 retranslate a familiar saying : " He hath made all 

 things beautiful according to their seasons ; also he 

 hath submitted the world to man's enquiry." On 

 the other hand, a most distinguished philosopher of 

 to-day is struck, and apparently perplexed, by "the 

 awkward and grotesque, even the ludicrous and 

 hideous forms of some plants and animals." I com- 

 mend him, with all respect, to Aristotle — or to that 

 Aristotelian verity given us in a nutshell by Rodin, 

 "II n'y a pas de laideur ! " 



To be sure, Aristotle's notion of beauty was not 

 Rodin's. He had a philosopher's comprehension of 

 the beautiful, as he had a great critic's knowledge 

 and understanding of poetry ; but wise and learned 

 as he was, he was neither artist nor poet. His style 

 seldom rises, and only in a few such passages as that 

 which I have quoted, above its level didactic plane. 

 Plato saw philosophy, astronomy, even mathematics, 

 as in a vision ; but Aristotle does not know this con- 

 summation of a dream. The bees have a king, with 

 Aristotle. Had Plato told us of the kingdom of the 

 bees, I think we should have had Shakespearian 

 imagery. The king would have had his "officers of 

 sorts," his magistrates, and soldiers, his "singing 

 masons building roofs of gold." Even Pliny, arid en- 

 cyclopedist as he is, can now and then throb and 

 thrill us as Aristotle cannot do — for example, when 

 he throws no little poetry and still more of music 

 into his description of the nightingale's song. 



But let us now come, at last, to exemplify, by a 

 few brief citations, the nature and extent of Aris- 

 totle's zoological knowledge. Among the bloodless 

 animals, as Aristotle called what we call the inverte- 

 brates, he distinguishes four great genera, and of 

 these the Molluscs are one. These are the cuttle- 

 fish, which have now surrendered their Aristotelian 

 name of "molluscs" to that greater group, which 

 is seen to include them, with the shellfish, or "ostra- 

 coderma " of Aristotle. These cuttle-fishes are 

 creatures that we seldom see, but in the Mediter- 

 ranean they are an article of food, and many kinds 

 are known to the fishermen. All, or well-nigh all, of 

 these many kinds were known to Aristotle, and his 

 account of them has come down to vis with singular 

 completeness. He describes their form and their 

 anatomv, their habits, their development, all with 

 such faithful accuracy that what we can add to-day 

 is of sccondarv importance. He begins with a 

 methodical description of the general form, tells us 

 of the body and fins, of the eipht arms with their 

 rows of suckers, of the abnormal position of the 

 head. He points out the two long: arms of Sepia and 

 of the Calamaries. and their absence in the octopus ; 

 and he tells us, what was onlv confirmed of late, that 



xo. 2269, VOL - 9 1 ] 



with these two long arms the creature clings to the 

 rock and sways about like a ship at anchor. He 

 describes the great eyes, the two big teeth forming 

 the beak ; and he dissects the whole structure of the 

 gut, with its long gullet, its round crop, its stomach, 

 and the little coiled coccal diverticulum ; dissecting 

 not only one but several species, and noting differ- 

 ences that were not observed again until Cuvier re- 

 dissected them. He describes the funnel and its rela- 

 tion to the mantle-sac, and the ink-bag, which he 

 shows to be largest in Sepia of all others. And here, 

 by the way, he seems to make one of those apparent 

 errors that, as it happens, turn out to be justified ; 

 for he tells us that in Octopus the funnel is on the 

 upper side, the fact being that when the creature lies 

 prone upon the ground, with all its arms spread and 

 flattened out, the funnel-tube (instead of being flat- 

 tened out beneath the creature's prostrate body) is 

 long enough to protrude upwards between arms and 

 head, and to appear on one side or other thereof, in 

 a position apparently the reverse of its natural one. 

 He describes the character of the cuttle-bone in Sepia, 

 and of the horny pen which takes its place in the 

 various calamaries, and notes the lack of any similar 

 structure in Octopus. He dissects in both sexes the 

 reproductive organs, noting without exception all 

 their essential and complicated parts ; and he had 

 figured these in his lost volume of anatomical 

 diagrams. He describes the various kinds of eggs, 

 and, with still more surprising knowledge, shows us 

 the little embryo cuttle-fish, with its great yolk-sac, 

 attached (in apparent contrast to the chick's) to the 

 little creature's developing head. 



But there is one other remarkable feature that he 

 knew_ ages before it was rediscovered, almost in our 

 own time. In certain male cuttle-fishes, in the breeding 

 season, one of the arms develops in a curious fashion 

 into a long coiled whip-lash, and in the act of breed- 

 ing may then be transferred to the mantle-cavity of 

 the female. Cuvier himself knew nothing of the 

 nature or the function of this separated arm, and, 

 indeed, if I am not mistaken, it was he who mistook 

 it for a parasitic worm. But Aristotle tells us of its 

 use and its temporary development, and of its struc- 

 ture in detail, and his description tallies closely with 

 the accounts of the most recent writers. 



Among the rarer species of the group he knew well 

 the little Argonaut, with its beautiful cockle-shell, and 

 tells how it puts up its two broad arms to sail with, 

 a story that has been rejected by many, but that, 

 after all, may perhaps be true. 



Now in all this there is far more than a mass of 

 fragmentary information gleaned from the fishermen. 

 It is a plain orderly treatise, on the ways and habits, 

 the_ varieties, and the anatomical structure, of an 

 entire group. Until Cuvier wrote there was none so 

 good, and Cuvier lacked knowledge that Aristotle 

 possessed. 



As exact and scarce less copious is the chapter in 

 which Aristotle deals with the crab and lobster, and 

 all such crustacean shell-fish, and that in which he 

 treats of insects, after their kind. Most wonderful of 

 all, perhaps, are those portions of his books in which 

 he speaks of fishes, their diversities, their structure, 

 their wanderings, and their food. Here we may read 

 of fishes that have only recentlv been rediscovered, 2 

 of structures only lately're-investlgated. of habits onlv 

 of late made known. 3 And many such anticipations 

 of our knowledge, and many allusions to things of 

 which perhaps we are still" ignorant, mav vet be 

 brought to light; for we are still far from having 



- E.g. Parnsilurus aristolelh. a »iluroid fish of the Achelous 

 3 E.g. the reproduction or the pipe-fish-s (Svntjnathi), the hermaphrodite 

 nature of the Serrant, the nest- Imili ling of the i 



