COSMOS, VOL. II - World eBook Library

INFLUENCE OF THE MACEDONIAN CAMPAIGNS. 527
not the
of the form and habits of the animals above referred
sia, constituted one satrapy of ancient Persia.* May
knowledge
to, and which, for the most part, was comprised in short
notices, have been transmitted to Aristotle, independently of
* The five animals named in the text, and especially the hippelaphus
(horse-stag with a long mane), the hippardion, the Bactrian camel and
the buffalo, are instanced by Cuvier as proofs of the later composition
of Aristotle's Historia Animalium (Hist, des Sciences Nat., t. i. p.
154). Cuvier, in the fourth volume of his admirable JKecherches sur lex
Ossemens fossiles, 1823, pp. 40-43 and p. 502, distinguishes between
two Asiatic stags with manes, which he calls Cervus hippelaphus and
Cervus aristotelis. He originally regarded the first-named, of which he
had seen a living specimen in London, and of which Diard had sent
him skins and antlers from Sumatra, as Aristotle's hippelaphus from
Arachosia (Hist, de Animal., ii. 2, 3, and 4, t. i. pp. 43, 44, Schneider) ;
but he afterwards thought that a stag's head, sent to him from Bengal by
Duvaucel, agreed still better, according to the drawing of the entire large
animal, with the Stagirite's description of the hippelaphus. This stag,
which is indigenous in the mountains of Sylhet in Bengal, in Nepaul,
and in the country east of the Indus, next received the name of Cervua
aristotelis. If, in the same chapter in which Aristotle speaks generally
of animals with manes, the horse-stag (Equicervus), and the Indian
guepard or hunting tiger (Felis jubata), are both understood, Schneider
(t.
iii. p. 66) considers the reading Trdpdtov preferable to that of TO
iTTTrapdior. The latter reading would be best interpreted to mean the
If Aristo-
giraffe, as Pallas also conjectures (Spicileg. Zool., fasc. i. p. 4).
tle had himself seen the guepard, and not merely heard it described, how
could he have failed to notice non-retractile claws in a feline animal ?
It is also surprising that Aristotle, who is always so accurate, if, as
August Wilhelm von Schlegel maintains, he had a menagerie near his
residence at Athens, and had himself dissected one of the Elephants
taken at Arbela, should have failed to describe the small opening near the
temples of the animal, where at the rutting season a strong smelling fluid
is secreted, often alluded to by the Indian poets. (Schlegel's Indische
Bibliothek, bd. i. s. 163-166.) I notice this apparently trifling circumstance
thus particularly, because the above-mentioned small aperture
was made known to us from the accounts of Megasthenes, to whom, never-
theless, no one would be led to ascribe anatomical knowledge. (Strabo,
lib. xv. pp. 704 and 705, Casaub.) I find nothing in the different zoolo-
gical works of Aristotle which have come down to us, that necessarily
implies his having had the opportunity of making direct observations on
elephants, or of his having dissected any. Although it is most probable
that the Historia Animalium was completed before Alexander's campaigns
in Asia Minor, there is undoubtedly a possibility that the work
may, as Stahr supposes (Aristotelia, th. ii. s. 98), have continued to
receive additions until the end of the author's life, Olymp. 114, 3, and
therefore three years after the death o Alexander; but we have no