~Additional material in the [3rd edition].~
CHAPTER VII.
The Progress of Ichthyology.
IF it had been already observed and admitted that sciences of the same kind follow, and must follow, the same course in the order of their development, it would be unnecessary to give a history of any special branch of Systematic Zoology; since botany has already afforded us a sufficient example of the progress of the classificatory sciences. But we may be excused for introducing a sketch of the advance of one department of zoology, since we are led to the attempt by the peculiar advantage we possess in having a complete history of the subject written with great care, and brought up to the present time, by a naturalist of unequalled talents and knowledge. I speak of Cuvier’s Historical View of Ichthyology, which forms the first chapter of his great work on that part of natural history. The place and office in the progress of this science, which is assigned to each person by Cuvier, will probably not be lightly contested. It will, therefore, be no small confirmation of the justice of the views on which the [420] distribution of the events in the history of botany was founded, if Cuvier’s representation of the history of ichthyology offers to us obviously a distribution almost identical.
We shall find that this is so;—that we have, in zoology as in botany, a period of unsystematic knowledge; a period of misapplied erudition; an epoch of the discovery of fixed characters; a period in which many systems were put forward; a struggle of an artificial and a natural method; and a gradual tendency of the natural method to a manifestly physiological character. A few references to Cuvier’s history will enable us to illustrate these and other analogies.
Period of Unsystematic Knowledge.—It would be easy to collect a number of the fabulous stories of early times, which formed a portion of the imaginary knowledge of men concerning animals as well as plants. But passing over these, we come to a long period and a great collection of writers, who, in various ways, and with various degrees of merit, contributed to augment the knowledge which existed concerning fish, while as yet there was hardly ever any attempt at a classification of that province of the animal kingdom. Among these writers, Aristotle is by far the most important. Indeed he carried on his zoological researches under advantages which rarely fall to the lot of the naturalist; if it be true, as Athenæus and Pliny state,[140] that Alexander gave him sums which amounted to nine hundred talents, to enable him to collect materials for his history of animals, and put at his disposal several thousands of men to be employed in hunting, fishing, and procuring information for him. The works of his on Natural History which remain to us are, nine Books Of the History of Animals; four, On the Parts of Animals; five, On the Generation of Animals; one, On the Going of Animals; one, Of the Sensations, and the Organs of them; one, On Sleeping and Waking; one, On the Motion of Animals; one, On the Length and Shortness of Life; one, On Youth and Old Age; one, On Life and Death; one, On Respiration. The knowledge of the external and internal conformation of animals, their habits, instincts, and uses, which Aristotle displays in these works, is spoken of as something wonderful even to the naturalists of our own time. And he may be taken as a sufficient representative of the whole of the period of which we speak; for he is, says Cuvier,[141] not only the first, but the only one of the ancients who has treated of the natural history of fishes (the province to which [421] we now confine ourselves,) in a scientific point of view, and in a way which shows genius.
[140] Cuv. Hist. Nat. des Poissons, i. 13.
[141] Cuv. p. 18.
We may pass over, therefore, the other ancient authors from whose writings Cuvier, with great learning and sagacity, has levied contributions to the history of ichthyology; as Theophrastus, Ovid, Pliny, Oppian, Athenæus, Ælian, Ausonius, Galen. We may, too, leave unnoticed the compilers of the middle ages, who did little but abstract and disfigure the portions of natural history which they found in the ancients. Ichthyological, like other knowledge, was scarcely sought except in books, and on that very account was not understood when it was found.
Period of Erudition.—Better times at length came, and men began to observe nature for themselves. The three great authors who are held to be the founders of modern ichthyology, appeared in the middle of the sixteenth century; these were Bélon, Rondelet, and Salviani, who all published about 1555. All the three, very different from the compilers who filled the interval from Aristotle to them, themselves saw and examined the fishes which they describe, and have given faithful representations of them. But, resembling in that respect the founders of modern botany, Briassavola, Ruellius, Tragus, and others, they resembled them in this also, that they attempted to make their own observations a commentary upon the ancient writers. Faithful to the spirit of their time, they are far more careful to make out the names which each fish bore in the ancient world, and to bring together scraps of their history from the authors in whom these names occur, than to describe them in a lucid manner; so that without their figures, says Cuvier, it would be almost as difficult to discover their species as those of the ancients.