10-1 
MEMOIR OF ARISTOTLE. 
plication of glasses has multiplied and magnified to 
our sight the almost endless succession and ever- 
diminishing tribes of insects, and enabled us to exa- 
mine more accurately their germs and organs. Yet 
nevertheless, with all these advantages, it is sur- 
prising how nearly the facts collected by Aristotle 
correspond with the advanced state of knowledge at 
the present time ; and in certain departments, Birds 
and Fishes, for example, it will not be easy to prove 
that modem writers have added much of import- 
ance to his observations. An eminent naturalist of 
the last century (Cavolini), in speaking concerning 
the development of the impregnated eggs of shell- 
fish, and the little attention which the subject had 
received, pays the following well-merited compliment 
to the minute information of the Stagirite : “ When 
I consider this defect, and turn to Aristotle’s His- 
tory of Animals, I am seized with astonishment on 
finding that he should have fully and distinctly seen 
the facts which we have been able only very imper- 
fectly to perceive ; that he should have described 
them with the utmost precision, and compared them 
with the well-known observations concerning the 
eggs of birds. My astonishment is the greater, 
when I reflect that he was unassisted by micro- 
scopes, which instruments have in our days been 
brought to great perfection." 
In chemistry, botany, and mineralogy, we scarce- 
ly find any thing approaching to a system among 
the ancients ; but in the animal kingdom, the true 
