ArousT i, 1905.] 



SCIENCE. 



141 



Barthelemy-Saint Hilaire's French transla- 

 tions. In my youth I had hoped and expected 

 to translate the ' History of Animals,' and 

 even commenced it; other matters, however, 

 distracted me, and I endeavored to interest 

 others, but without eventual success. Some 

 years ago Professor D'Arcy W. Thompson, of 

 Dundee, informed me that he had ahnost com- 

 pleted a translation, but it has not yet been 

 put to press. A good translation would de- 

 mand a union of such qualifications as Pro- 

 fessor Thompson has, and most of his prede- 

 cessors did not have — an intimate acquaint- 

 ance with the Greek language as well as of 

 the Greek animals. The union of President 

 Jordan with Professor Hoffman realized the 

 demand so far as the fishes were involved. 



The difficulty encountered by the would-be 

 translator of Aristotle was entertainingly il- 

 lustrated in 1862. The Eev. W. Houghton, 

 in an article in the Natural History Review 

 (II., 136-149), "On the Desirability of an 

 English Translation of Aristotle's ' History of 

 Animals,' " gave a translation of the first 

 chapter of the first book of the history, which 

 was soon criticized (II., 329-332) by Dr. John 

 Scouler and, after a couple of admissions, 

 defended (II., 408^15) by the translator. 

 Meanwhile, in the same year, appeared Rich- 

 ard Creswell's translation. A comparison of 

 Houghton's and Creswell's translations with 

 each other and the original will show how 

 different such may be without either deviating 

 excessively from the Greek text. On the 

 whole, there is no urgent reason to regret that 

 Houghton's translation was not completed 

 instead of Creswell's. The absence of a suf- 

 ficient knowledge of zoology is, however, 

 sometimes glaringly manifest in Creswell's 

 work, especially in the identifications of the 

 Aristotelian names in footnotes and the index. 



Scores of mistranslations or faulty transla- 

 tions occur in Creswell's work, and a couple 

 illustrating the kinds may be cited. " Some 

 animals unite in their nature the character- 

 istics of man and quadrupeds, as apes, mon- 

 keys and cynocephali " ! (p. 32). This does 

 not represent what Aristotle intended; he 

 meant that some animals combine in their 



persons characteristics of man and quadru- 

 peds, and instanced as such macaques '-KtOrj- 

 xuc), monkeys {xrifiai) and baboons {-/.w^tr/.i- 

 <paXin). The word ape nowadays is mostly 

 limited to the tailless anthropoid apes which 

 were entirely uhknown to Aristotle and the 

 Greeks. 



Apropos of tails and hair, Aristotle prom- 

 ises to speak of the monkey-like animals sub- 

 sequently, but notices the hippelaphus or 

 nilgau and indicates that it has a beard 

 under the throat. Creswell says (p. 26) : ' the 

 hipellaphus has a beard upon its larynx ' I 

 The erroneous spelling hipellaphus is repeated 

 on the same page. 



A word as to the use of Aristotle. His 

 zoological treatises are not repertories of ex- 

 act information to which a learner should be 

 referred, though proclaimed to be such by 

 some. In my youthful days I was advised 

 by an eminent naturalist of the time to study 

 and follow Aristotle. It happened that I had 

 studied and in a special article ' On the Status; 

 of Aristotle in Systematic Zoology' {Am. 

 Nat. for 1873) I gave reasons why I consid- 

 ered it inexpedient to follow* him. Let me 

 add another now. As Dr. Eastman well 

 knows, several paleichthyologists have recently 

 been basing new names on fossil otoliths or 

 earbones of fishes. He and others may be 

 amused by Aristotle's ideas respecting the oto- 

 liths of some Greek fishes. " Those which 

 have a stone in their head, as the chromis, 

 labrax, scisena and phagrus, suffer most in 

 the winter; for the refrigeration of the stone 

 causes them to freeze and be driven on shore " 

 (VIIL, XX, 5) ! Theo. Gill. 



ENGINEERING PROBLEMS IN A COURSE IN PHYSICS. 



To THE Editor of Science: Last fall my 

 attention was attracted to a letter published 

 in Science from a professor of physics in a 

 school of engineering. He asked if others 

 agreed with him that more of ' pure science ' 

 ought to be required in engineering courses. 

 At least some of us who are not teaching in 

 either technical or engineering schools feel 

 a need that is just the opposite to the one 

 above expressed. It would be of much assist- 



