470 Revieivs — Old Natural History Books. 



Both plants and animals appear on Egyptian and Assyrian 

 monuments, and the love of tlie Egyptians for animals of all sorts, 

 especially for those held sacred to special deities, is well known. 



"The ancient Egyptians, however, made no systematic study of 

 Natural History, nor did the early Greek philosophers. Some 

 scattered observations are met with among the writings of the 

 latter, while to Pythagoras [b.c. 569-470] have been attributed 

 ideas concerning the changes in relative level between sea and land 

 that may not improbably be those of later observers. Herodotu&^ 

 [b.c. 484 - 406] certainly mentions the occurrence of shells, 

 presumably marine, on the hills of the Nile valley, and deduces 

 from that and other facts the former extension of the sea over 

 the area.^ 



"Hippocrates [b.c. 460-361], the priest-physician and 'Father 

 of Medicine,' mentions the uses of some 240 plants. 



" The first person, however, to whom belongs the credit of 

 instituting a genuine study of Natural History was Aristotle 

 [b.c. 384-322], and he has, therefore, been justly called the 'Father 

 of Natural History.' 



" His writings on Animals, of which he appears to have known 

 some 500 species, would seem to contain a certain admixture of 

 astronomical symbolism ; '^ or else portions belonging to his 

 astronomical writings were by an error of his first transcribers 

 incorporated with those on animals, and this, considering the 

 conditions under which his MSS. had been preserved, would not be 



remarkable He divided animals into Encevia, or those 



having (red) blood, and Ancsma, or those without, and subdivided 

 the former, or Vertebrata, into : Vivipara, Birds, the other 

 Ovipara and Fish ; while the latter, or Invertebrata, were sub- 

 divided into : Malakia, Malakostraca, Entoma, and Ostrakoderma. 

 The insects (Entoma) he yet further subdivided, and three of hi& 

 groups, Coleoptera, Psychae [= Lepidoptera], and Diptera, hold 

 good at the present day ! . . • . 



" In botany and mineralogy little was done by Aristotle and 

 nothing in geology as now understood, although it is interesting to- 

 note in passing that he maintained the earth to be a spherical body, 

 while he was acquainted with the occurrence of fossils in the rocks, 

 and discussed the changes on the earth's surface necessary to account 

 for them. 



" It was Aristotle's favourite pupil Theophrastus [b.c. 371-286],, 

 to whom he bequeathed his MSS., who took up the subjects of 

 botany and mineralogy. Minerals were at that time classified into 

 'metals' and 'stones,' and only his treatise on stones has survived;, 

 it is chiefly intei'esting as showing what characters were made use 

 of at that time for the discrimination of minerals and the description 

 of the species, as well as a record of the places of their occurrence. 



1 Lyell in his "Principles" does not seem to have read Herodotus' statement 

 quite correctly. 



* See paper by D'Arcy Thompson, " On Bird and Beast in Ancient Sj-mbolism " ; 

 Trans. Eoy. Soc. Edinbuigh, vol. xxxviii, p. 179. 



