Page:Greek Biology and Medicine.djvu/66

 GREEK BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE the De Generatione Animalium; ^^ then more briefly, the Enquiry Into Plants of his pupil Theophrastus.'* Aristotle's prodigious legacy of biological, or let us say zoological, knowledge has often been commented on, criticized, and appraised; his extraordinary insight and grasp of veritable, frequently intricate and difficult facts have been made clear and the errors (however arising) in his writings exposed. Usually one can tell when his knowledge is derived from the reports of other men, and when he has gained it from his own observation of animals, and especially from the many dissections which he must have performed. That he dissected whatever animals he could lay hands on is proved by his knowledge of their parts; but he rarely refers to his dissections -^ any more than to the method and manner of his re- searches generally. It is results or conclusions that are given in these writings, whether by Aristotle himself or some pupil.^" From the first the reader is impressed with Aristotle's comprehensive desire to order and classify the objects of his study. He would distinguish the parts of animals and arrange the animals themselves by genera and species, [44]