RISE AND PROGRESS OF ZOOLOGY. Xxi 



for Natural History ; and his principal divisions 

 of the Animal Kingdom are so well founded, 

 that almost all of them are still substantially 

 admitted. Nothing can more clearly prove 

 than this circumstance how deeply he had 

 meditated on the subject. In arranging facts, 

 he goes back to causes ; from general prin- 

 ciples he deduces a multitude of comparisons 

 pregnant with result, and calculated to ex- 

 hibit his subject under every point of view. 

 The work, replete with luminous specula- 

 tions and important truths, bespeaks at once 

 the vigour and extent of a mighty genius, 

 and the acuteness of a correct observer, whose 

 opportunities of research, through the libe- 

 rality of Alexander, have perhaps been sel- 

 dom equalled. Not to speak of other branches, 

 Aristotle may be considered as, properly 

 speaking, the first Ichthyologist. He has not 

 only collected all preceding observations on 

 fishes, and added a multitude of his own, but 

 he has arranged those animals, and considered 

 them, in a general view, with a discrimination 

 and exactness not less to be admired than 

 the order of his ideas and the simplicity of 

 his diction. It is true he has confined him- 

 self to the grander and more marked exter- 

 nal distinctions in his classification of fishes. 



