38 



fabulous tales concerning the habits of animals, but I 

 scarcely believe that he, any more than the great traveller, 

 Herodotus, really believed in them any more, perhaps, than 

 people do to-day. But in those days it was highly dangerous 

 to openly express disbelief in the legends of the times, as 

 Galileo found to his misfortune, even 1900 years later. 



After Aristotle, his pupil and friend, Theophrastus, wrote 

 many works, but of these we only know portions, though 

 his two books on plants are more nearly complete. It may 

 be said that what Aristotle did for zoology, Theophrastus 

 did for botany, that is to say, that the works of these two 

 writers held their own for nearly 2000 years. 



It is exceedingly difficult for us, who work in these days 

 with so many advantages, to imagine the difficulties, to 

 understand the disadvantages under which the naturalists of 

 2000 years ago did their work. There were no field-glasses 

 with which to observe the habits of animals in nature, no 

 microscopes for the study of minute structures, there was no 

 chemistry, no means of reducing substances to their ultimate 

 elements. There was only a small and that not an easily 

 accessible literature, and travel was then a much more 

 expensive and serious undertaking than it is now. So much 

 for the introduction. 



Perhaps the earliest evidence that we possess of man's 

 studies in natural history is afforded us by the spirited 

 sketches of animals, worked on bone or on the walls of his 

 rock dwelling by Palaeolithic man. Rough as these sketches 

 are they show that the artists who executed them knew the 

 habits and haunts of the animals they depicted. Later we 

 have the hieroglyphs of the ancient Egyptians which portray 

 in a conventional manner, well suited to the purpose, various 

 wild and domesticated creatures ; and we know from their 

 writings, and from the mummies which still exist that they 

 took a curious interest in natural history. From the writings 

 of the early Greek poets we may gather here and there, odd 

 scraps of natural history details, used generally to illustrate 

 or emphasise the writer's meaning. Thus Homer (about 

 850 B.C.) says in the " Iliad"': 



" And round them thronged the crowd 

 As swarms of bees, that pour in ceaseless stream 

 From out the crevice of some hollow rock, 

 Now clustering, and anon : mid vernal flowers, 

 Some here, some there, in busy numbers fly. 1 ' 



