vii Aristotle on Birds 175 



ticulars and habits, but he gives us only the common 

 Greek name ; and in the case of any ordinary little 

 brown bird that has not some striking peculiarity in 

 biU, or tail, or claws, he leaves us, of course, 

 altogether in doubt as to the particular species he 

 means. In fact, I could not possibly have ventured 

 to come and speak to you about him and his birds 

 this evening if a learned ornithologist, the Swedish 

 Professor SundevaU, had not been at the pains to 

 bring to bear on Aristotle his knowledge of Greek, 

 as well as his knowledge of natural history, and so 

 saved me an amount of trouble for which I never 

 could have found time.^ 



Let us now turn to Aristotle's account of the 

 birds ; and in the first place let us see what he says 

 of their numbers and habits. It is surprising at 

 first to find that he mentions no less than 175 

 different kinds ^ — species we can hardly call them 

 with certainty, because the distinction between 

 genus and species was then of course unknown, and 

 old naturalists, just like country folk now, were always 

 liable to confound species together and call them by 



^ The Clarendon Press is about to publish a Glossary of Greek 

 Birds, by Prof. Darcy Thompson of Dundee, a scholar as well as a 

 zoologist. As I have been privileged to see some of the proof- 

 sheets of this work, I am able to say that it will contain the most 

 exhaustive treatment of the subject that has as yet appeared. 

 Sundevall's book is Die Thierarten des Arisiotles : Stockholm, 

 1863. 



^ So SundevaU : others reduce it to 150 or less. 



