Guide to an Exhibition of 
in some districts the Monkey and Crocodile, were carefully 
embalmed at death. 
The ancient Egyptians, however, made no systematic study 
of Natural History ; nor did the early Greek philosophers. 
Some scattered observations are met with among the 
writings of the latter, while to Pythagoras [b.c. 569-470] 
have been attributed ideas concerning the changes in relative 
level between sea and land that may not improbably be those 
of later observers. Herodotus [b.c. 484-406] certainly 
mentions the occurrence of shells, presumably marine, on the 
hills of the Nile Valley, and deduces from that and other facts 
the former extension of the sea over that area. 
Hippocrates [b.c. 460-361], the priest-physician, and 
“ Father of Medicine,” mentions the uses of some 240 plants. 
T he first person, however, to whom belongs the credit of 
instituting a genuine study of Natural History was 
Aristotle [b.c. 384-322], and he has therefore been justly 
called the ‘‘ Father of Natural History.” 
His writings on Animals, of which he appears to have 
known some 500 species, would seem to contain a certain 
admixture of astronomical symbolism; or else portions belonging 
to his astronomical writings were by an error of his first 
transcribers incorporated with those on animals, and this, 
considering the conditions under which his MSS. had been 
preserved, would not be remarkable. 
Although Aristotle proposed no definite classification of 
Animals, it is deducible from his writings that he divided them 
into Enaema, or those having (red) blood, and Anaema, or those 
without, and subdivided the former, or Vertebrata, into :— 
Vivipara, Birds, the other Ovipara, and Fish ; while the latter, 
or Invertebrata, were subdivided into :—Malakia, Malakostraka, 
Entoma, and Ostrakoderma. The insects (Entoma) he yet 
further subdivided, and three of his groups, Coleoptera, Psychas 
[= Lepidoptera] and Diptera, hold good at the present day. 
The only formal terms of classification employed by him are 
eidos, or species, and genos, or genus, the latter being far more 
vaguely used than at the present day. 
In Botany and Mineralogy little was done by Aristotle, and 
6 
