XXX. THE HISTORY OF THE SCIENCE OF 

 ZOOLOGY 



The study of animal life began long before the Christian 

 Era. The Greeks, especially Aristotle, acquired a wide 

 range of knowledge concerning a great variety of animals; 

 but this knowledge consisted of a mass of isolated and un- 

 connected facts that led to no systematic outline of the 

 animal kingdom. As a well-grounded science, zoology has 

 not existed much over two hundred years, although the in- 

 formation concerning animals and animal life gained prior 

 to that time included valuable and reliable facts concerning 

 a wide range of forms. 



Aristotle. — Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), the eminent Greek 

 philosopher, by his own researches and observations, 

 gathered together an immense array of facts regarding 

 animals, some of which were remarkably accurate and some 

 of which were curiously incorrect. He wrote several 

 treatises on zoological subjects among which are The His- 

 tory of Animals, The Generation of Animals, and The 

 Parts of Animals. He divided the animal kingdom into 

 two great groups; namely, one containing those forms that 

 possessed blood and another including the forms without 

 blood. 



Pliny. — After Aristotle came Pliny, the elder, who lived 

 in the first century and wrote a natural history which dealt 

 with the whole realm of nature — plants, animals, minerals, 

 stars, etc. He cannot be regarded as an original worker 



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