XXVi PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF THE 



attention to order or plan. There are, how- 

 ever, some curious details in it respecting the 

 habits of fishes, and a few facts which may be 

 relied on. 



It is scarcely necessary to mention the names 

 of Apuleius and Athenaeus the grammarian 

 who wrote on fishes. They added nothing to 

 the existing stock of zoological science, and are 

 yet the only names that deserve mention, from 

 the time of iElian and Pliny, to the commence- 

 ment of the sixteenth century. % 



In the commencement of that period flourished 

 Paulus Jovius, a Roman physician ; Pierre Belon 

 a physician likewise of Mans, and professor of 

 medicine in the College of France; Rondelet, 

 professor royal of the same art, at the university 

 of Montpellier ; and Ippolito Salviani of the 

 same profession at Rome. Of these, all wrote ex- 

 clusively on fishes, with the exception of Belon, 

 who treated also on birds. Their observations 

 on Ichthyology are excellent, and their labours 

 tended much to extricate the synonymy of these 

 animals from the labyrinth of confusion in which 

 it was involved, and to dissipate the clouds of 

 ignorance and error by which this department of 

 Zoology was peculiarly obscured. The work of 

 Salviani on aquatic animals which was published 

 at Rome in 1554, is superbly illustrated. His 



