wiz ARISTOTLE THE FIRST SCALE-READER 
fishermen and his close acquaintance with the fish markets— 
a haunting of which in Mediterranean ports was, as in Naples 
it still is, productive of a liberal education from the numerous 
specimens displayed and the hundreds of vernacular names 
applied to them. 
Contrast this with our British markets, where, despite our 
more favourable wealth of sea-harvest, the kinds on sale seldom 
exceed a score or so, and their vernacular names hardly reach 
half-a-hundred. 
Granting, however, all the advantages accruing from 
such acquaintance! with fishers and fishmongers, it needed 
an Aristotle to produce a book of such keen observation and 
(generally) accurate conclusions as his Natural History; for 
be it remembered that this, when compared with the vast 
volume of his other works, is a mere by-product of his industry 
and intellect, thrown off probably in the few years of his 
banishment. 
Little escaped his ken, or his pen.2 At one moment he 
notes that neither hermaphroditism nor parthenogenesis are 
uncommon, at the next he deals with the senses in fish. The 
question whether fish do actually hear or do not hear, remains, 
comme les pauvres, always with us; it remains like Etna 
dormant for decades, suddenly to pour forth columns of print 
which lava-like scar the fair face of many a ream of paper. 
Aristotle comes down flat-footed in his verdict: fishes 
(we read, IV. 8) in spite of having no visible auditory organs 
undoubtedly do hear; “for they are observed to run away 
from any loud noises like the rowing of a galley. Indeed some 
people dwelling near the sea affirm that of all living creatures 
the fish is the quickest of hearing.”’ 
Space forbids my dwelling on the various theories as to 
1 Cf. I. V. Carus, Prodomus Faunge Mediterranea, vol. 11., Stuttgart, 
1889-93. 
2 Of the closeness of his observation may be instanced (1) the development 
by the cuttle fish during the breeding season of one of his arms for trans- 
ference to the mantle-cavity of the female—a function of which Cuvier himself 
was ignorant, and which was not rediscovered till the latter end of the last 
century, and (2) the method of bringing forth of the shark—yareds Acios 
—which was forgotten, till Johannes Miller brought it to light. See D’Arcy 
Thompson, of. cit., pp. 19-21. 
