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The care taken of the Prophet Elijah by our sable and 

 far-seeing friend, the raven, yon all remember reading 

 of. 



The dove and the raven were both honored with 

 important missions by that distinguished and most suc- 

 cessful navigator, Capt. Noah. You know how much 

 the ibis was petted, nay honored, in Egypt ; the white 

 ibis was in special veneration in Thebes, had the run 

 of the city. The stork was sung by Herodotus, the 

 swan by Virgil and by a host of other poets : Aristo- 

 phanes,some twenty-three hundred years ago, celebrated 

 not only the croaking of frogs, but also the melody of 

 birds. 



It was reserved to one of the loftiest minds of anti- 

 quity, Aristotle of Stagyra, to furnish the world with 

 the earliest methodical information on zoology. This 

 great man was the first to observe and attempt to 

 explain the organization of animated nature. His 

 treatise will ever be regarded as one of the masterpieces 

 of antiquity. The generation of animals, their habits, 

 their organs, the mechanism of their functions, their 

 ressemblances and differences are therein discussed 

 with astonishing clearness and sagacity. Aristotle may 

 be reckoned as having established a solid basis for 

 natural history, and his principal divisions of the 

 animal kingdom are so well founded that almost all of 

 them are still substantially admitted. In arranging facts 

 he carefully goes back to causes from general results. 



We next come to the Eoman, Pliny the Elder, born 

 A. D. 23, who died, as you may have read, in the year 

 79 of our era, from the noxious fumes of Vesuvius 

 during the eruption which, it is said, destroyed Her- 

 culaneum. Having the charge of a Eoman fleet, he had, 

 in attempting to succor some of the unfortunate inhab- 

 itants, ventured too near the scene of the calamity. He 

 died during the following night. I presume some of 

 you have perused the very interesting letter recording 



