History of Conchology. 239 



terials, among which there shall at least be found a type of every 

 modification of structure exhibited in the class. But in his age the 

 number of Shells known was very confined, and to have advanced 

 beyond the primary divisions of them into univalves, bivalves, and 

 turbinated kinds, could be of no possible utility, and might have 

 been hurtful to a further progress, for " the over early and peremp- 

 tory reduction of knowledge into arts and methods" is an error from 

 which, as Bacon has justly remarked, " time commonly receives 

 small augmentation." * His views were higher, and his researches 

 were pushed in the only direction in which they could be made 

 available. He has left us a history of the Cephalopodes remarka- 

 ble for its fulness and accuracy, and equally remarkable for its 

 exemption from the marvels and puerilities which disfigure the 

 same history as delivered by his successors ; and although there 

 may be less of observation and fact in his account of the shelled 

 molluscans, yet we find the same ends kept ever in view, and the 

 incessant effort to attain his object by attention to the habits of the 

 animals, and an examination of their anatomy. The numerous de- 

 fects, obscurities, and errors which a vain criticism might readily 

 detect in his details under both of these heads, are justly attributable 

 to the accident of position, for he was the first to track the road 

 without the guide of a fixed nomenclature, and without the light 

 which analogy could lend, — anatomy at this period being scarcely 

 practised, and physiology almost unknown. By his own researches 

 he was enabled to characterize several groups of Testacea with some 

 degree of precision, and to acquaint himself with many valuable 

 particulars of their structure and economy, and although some of his 

 general corollaries from these are hasty, yet even in this minor de- 

 partment of study the Stagyrite claims our admiration for his in- 

 dustry and sagacity, and our gratitude for giving us an example of 

 scientific inquiry which it were well to follow. 



But the spring which welled so pure and copiously had no issue 

 to its waters. Aristotle had no successor in testaceology among his 

 countrymen ; and when literature fled the shores of Attica, and 

 found its unwilling way to Rome, it was unattended by the natural 

 sciences. In the constitution of society among the Romans, it is 

 not difficult to find causes for their total neglect of natural history ; 

 and these operated with peculiar force when Pliny began to collect 

 together the materials of his great encyclopaedia. Devoted in an 

 especial manner to a public life, the Romans were negligent of a 



* Comp. Sprengel Hist, de la Medecine, Vol. i. p. 400. 



