100 
MEMOIR OF ARISTOTLE. 
due to liis descriptions of the terraqueous globe, 
with its seas, rivers, mountains, and volcanoes ; or to 
his minute diligence in investigating the several ob- 
jects of the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms. 
Fortunate it is for Natural Science, that both his 
History of Animals, and his philosophy respecting 
that history, have reached us in a far more perfect 
state than any other portion of his physiological 
writings. On the subject of Zoology, his treatises 
were comprised in fifty books, of which twenty-five 
are happily preserved. It is quite immaterial to our 
purpose, to inquire whether this immense body of 
Natural knowledge is to be considered as containing 
the result of his own observations only, or whether 
it is a collection of all that had been observed by 
others. The latter is most probably the case ; so 
vast an undertaking being evidently too much for 
any one man to accomplish. It may seem extraor- 
dinary, that, in an early age, without the inventions 
and improvements of modern philosophy, and on a 
branch of science which is naturally progressive, so 
vast a mass of information should have been col- 
lected and arranged by a solitary individual, how- 
ever long his life, and however great his leisure. 
But Aristotle was the friend of a man as extraor- 
dinary as himself, who generously supplied him with 
the means of at once gratifying his taste for univer- 
sal learning, and conferring an invaluable benefit on 
posterity. The conquests of Alexander, and his 
marches through so many distant and different coun- 
