Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/818

798 existence of animals without knees is again supposed by this remark: "Since the members are equal, inflection must be made in the knee, or in some joint, if the animal that walks is destitute of knees." If Aristotle had ever seen an elephant move, is it not probable that he would have spoken more decidedly and correctly on these points? But the most astonishing assertion is that "the elephant can not swim on account of the weight of its body"!

Aristotle's account of the camel is, on the whole, graphic and correct; he describes both the one-humped Arabian and the Bactrian species. He mentions the walk of the camel, stating that it moves with the hind-foot following the fore-foot on the same side. He twice repeats the statement that the camel has no teeth in the upper Jaw. Doubtless he alludes to the front teeth; but the camel has two incisors in the upper jaw and two canines, so that Aristotle has not, as Cuvier asserts, "perfectly described and characterized the two species of camel." Among other strange notions held by Aristotle, apparently without any misgivings, may be mentioned the lion having no cervical vertebræ, but only one bone in the neck, its bones, which are small and slight, being without marrow, except a little in the thigh and foreleg. In his work on "Parts of Animals," he joins wolves with lions in having one neck-bone, and gives as a reason, "Nature saw that these animals wanted the neck more for strength than for other purposes." Aristotle's notions with respect to the skull are peculiar; the brain is placed beneath the sinciput, and the occiput is empty—an error twice repeated. Women's skulls have only one suture, in the form of a circle. He mentions as an extraordinary thing the fact of a man's skull having once been seen without any suture, copying Herodotus in this, who says such a skull was found on the battle-field of Platæa. The skull-sutures in aged persons are frequently obliterated. Again, "The cranium of the dog consists of a single bone." He must have got hold of an old specimen. Certain abnormal deposits of bone which occasionally are found with diseased conditions of the heart in some of the mammalia were considered as necessary organs in the horse and some kind of oxen, "which on account of their large size have a bony heart for the sake of support." The seal and some swine are said to have no gall-bladder. The gall-bladder is by no means constant in the mammalia, and Aristotle is correct in saying it is not present in the elephant, stag, horse, ass, and mule. It is difficult to know what he means when he says that the Achaïnian stags appear to have a gall in the tail; we are quite in the dark as to what these stags are. In another place he mentions a stag of the same kind, which when captured was found to have a considerable quantity of green ivy growing on its horns as on green wood. Buffon seems to have thought this story possible.

That Aristotle placed too much reliance on the marvelous and impossible animal lore current in his age is obvious. Speaking of the