certain species—such people as fishermen, sailors, sponge-divers, fowlers, hunters, herdsmen, bee-keepers, and the like. We know how difficult it is to get pure fact, unalloyed by fancy, from informants of this kind; and therefore it is no wonder that Aristotle, in compiling the first treatise on Natural History that was ever written, and in collecting his materials by inquiry made at first or second hand from the working classes, should have admitted many a “yarn” and many a “traveller’s tale” into his pages. The subject was too new to admit of his being able by instinctive sagacity to reject the improbable; a judgment of that kind is only attained by one who possesses a vast stock of well-ascertained facts, and by unconscious analogy can argue from the known to the unknown. In many cases Aristotle shows himself almost as simple as old Herodotus, with his tales of the phoenix and other marvels.
The following may be quoted as one instance out of many of the naïveté of the Stagirite (‘Animals,’ IX. xlviii.): “Among marine animals there are many instances recorded of the mild, gentle disposition of the dolphin, and of its love of its children, and its affection, in the neighbourhood of Tarentum, Caria, and other places. It is said that when a dolphin was captured and wounded on the coast of Caria, a great multitude of dolphins came into the harbour, until the fisherman let him go, when they all went away together. And one large dolphin always follows the little ones to take care of them. And sometimes a shoal of large and small dolphins has been seen to-
