462 STATUS OF ARISTOTLE IN SYSTEMATIC ZOOLOGY. 
members are to be considered, it would be rather a person of pe- 
culiar idiosyncrasy whose attention would not be first arrested by 
the characters exhibited by man (biped), quadrupeds, and whales 
(fish-like and without hind limbs). 
Equally probable would it be that, when examining the feet of 
quadrupeds, his attention would be first arrested by the differences 
seen in the hoofed and unguiculate mammals; and if, further, the 
former were studied, the cloven hoof of the ruminant, the solid one 
. of the horse, and the divided one of the elephant would be equally 
likely to first attract attention. And yet these obvious points of 
structure are almost the only ones noticed by Aristotle. He made 
no attempt to coordinate them, to subordinate the groups so dis- 
tinguished, or to’ assess a taxonomic valuation on characters Or 
groups ; in brief, there is no evidence of definite ideas of classifica- 
tion having occurred to him. It may, indeed, be well believed that 
some indistinct perception of system must have flashed upon we 
mind of such a man, but the impression was too undecided and in- 
tangible to be seized and embodied in a system. 
Those groups which Aristotle recognized are the crude mate- 
rials with which the naturalist has to deal. He was unacquainted 
even with the characters which furnish the criteria for classifying 
them, and to assign to him any definite views respecting their re- 
lationship is an anachronism and may involve a wrong to himself. 
In fine, there is, so far as I can perceive, not the slightest evl- 
dence of any recognition of what is now understood by classifica- 
tion in any of the extant treatises of Aristotle on animals, and 
the systems framed to embody his generalizations have been Con- 
structed from isolated sentences wrested from their context and 
simply reflect the framer’s notions or his ideas as to what Aristotle 
might have supposed. 
And, as a hearty admirer of the great philosopher (more excel- 
lent in intellectual than in physical science), I may claim a right 
to protest against systems (like that, e. g., published by Macleay) 
which have been fathered upon him; I may assume that had his 
attention ever been challenged, he might have better appreciated 
the relations existing between the groups which he, in CO 
with daily observers, perceived. : 
Careful and repeated perusal of Aristotle’s biological treatises 
have, in fact, failed to convey to the writer any impression save 
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