Morning journal and courier., 1884-12-13

From the Edinburgh Reviewl
 ''Cuvier, already in all his glory" says M. Saint -Hilaire, "dees not hesitate to say that the history of the elephant is more exact in Aristotle than in Buffon, and in speaking of the camel he praises Aristotle for having per fectly described and characterized the two species " We have not an edition of Buffon at hand to which to refer, but if Aristotle's account of the elephant is more correct than that of Buffon we are sorry for Buffon. Aris- totle speaks many things correctly of the elephant, but some very incorrectly, and it is quite question whether he ever saw this animal in his life. Be this as it may, he af firms that it has no nails on it's toes, though he correctly refers to the toes, which arc scarcely distinguished The nails of the ele- phant are one of the 'tpoints" which the natives of India always regard as one of the marks of a well-bred animal. and are nearly always conspicuous. M. Saint -Hilaire tells us in note on this passage that Camus and NM. Aubert and Wimmer consider this pass age an interpolation. Let us take another point-the ffgrey- headed errorn that the ele- phant has no joints. Aristotle says. "the elephant is not so constructed as to be unable to sit down and bend his legs, as some persons have said, but from his great weight he is unable to bend them on both sides at once, but leans either to the right side or the left, and sleeps in this position" The elephant, that is to say. having bent one foreleg cannot then bend the other so as to kneel with both, which is contrary to fact. Aristotle demolishes the absurd statement that the elephant has no joints in this passage in his History of Ami maIs," ii 1, s4,) but in his treatise the Progressive Motions of Animals he seems to leave it doubtful whether the elephant has joints in his knees After showing that without inflexion there can be no progress sion, he says: Progression, however, is possible without infexion of the leg, in the same manner as infants creep, and there is an ancient story of this kind about elephants, which is not true, for such animals move be- cause infexion takes place in their shoulder blades or hips" The existence of such ami mals without knees is again supposed by this remark: fsSince the members are equal, in flexion must be made either in the knees or in some joint, if the animal that walks is des- titute of knees" If Aristotle had ever seen en elephant move, is it not probable that he would have spoken more decidedly and cor. rectly on these points2 Sch1egel, indeed, asserts that the accounts of the elephant the result of frequent and minute actual ex- animation of both sexes of this animal, and that what he could not ascertain-viZ., the beasts mode of life in it's wild state-he doubtless ascertained from the Indian con d-,ctors of these animals which had been sent to Aristotle by Alexander; on this subject we shall remark by and by. But surely 1t was not necessary for correct observation to know the habits of the elephant in its wild state; captive specimen would have e, equai- ly answered such e purpose. AristotIes as sertion that the male elephant arrives at puberty when he is five or six years old IS quite erroneous; however, in another passage he correctly gives the age at twenty years. But the most astonishing assertion is that esthe elephant cannot swim on account of tbe weight of it's body" Such a statement is one of Aristotles many erroneous general izations.