2 INTRODUCTION 



men, shepherds, herdsmen, horse-breeders, dog-fanciers, 

 hunters, fowlers, fishermen and beemasters handed down 

 to their sons the slight improvements which had brought 

 them success. Physicians were highly esteemed, and 

 gave employment to druggists and root collectors, who 

 sought out rare plants, not disdaining to practise 

 superstitious rites, possibly as a means of keeping out 

 competitors.^ From such informants as these much 

 knowledge concerning plants and animals was collected, 

 and at length recorded in books, most of which are now 

 known only by chance quotations. Herodotus describes 

 the rivers, climates and remarkable animals of the distant 

 countries which he had visited in the course of his travels. 

 Xenophon, who was not only a general, an historian, and 

 a moralist, but an inquisitive naturalist and sportsman 

 as well, shows how much attention had been bestowed 

 upon animals before the age of systematic treatises. He 

 gives lively descriptions of the hares, deer, wild boars 

 and hounds which amused his leisure, and contributes 

 the valuable information that in his day lions and 

 leopards still haunted Thrace, Macedonia or the wild 

 country further to the north. 



Some of the Athenian philosophers discoursed upon 

 natural phenomena, and especially upon the phenomena 

 of life, with an acuteness and comprehensiveness which 

 have moved the admiration of all succeeding generations. 

 Aristotle, who dealt with the whole range of science, 

 surprises the modern reader by his knowledge of migra- 

 tion (not only in the easily observed crane, pelican and 

 quail, but in the mackerel and tunny), of the artifice by 

 which the angler-fish captures its prey, of the brood- 

 pouch of the male pipe-fish (in this case the facts were 

 only partly understood), of the laying of eggs by worker- 



'Theophrastus, Hist. Plant., IX, Ch. 8. 



