Abstract
AMONG the isles of Greece there is a certain island, insula nobilis et amoena, which Aristotle knew well. It lies on the Asian side, between the Troad and the Ionian coast, and far into its bosom, by the little town of Pyrrha, runs a broad and sheltered lagoon. It is the island of Lesbos. Here Aristotle came and spent two years of his life, in middle age, bringing his princess-bride from the petty court ot a little neighbouring State where he had already spent three years. It was just before he went to Macedon to teach Alexander; it was ten years later that he went back to Athens to begin teaching in the Lyceum. Now in the “Natural History,” references to places in Greece proper are very few indeed; there is much more frequent mention of places on the northern and eastern coasts of the Ægean, from Aristotle's own homeland down to the Carian coast; and to places in and round that island of Lesbos or Mytilene, a whole cluster of Aristotle's statements and descriptions refer. Here, for instance, Aristotle mentions a peculiarity of the deer on a neighbouring islet, of the weasels by the wayside by another island town. He speaks of the big purple Murex shells at Cape Lectum, and of the different sorts of sponges found on the landward and the seaward side of Cape Malia. But it is to the lagoon at Pyrrha that Aristotle oftenest alludes. Here were starfish, in such abundance as to be a pest to the fishermen; here the scallops had been exterminated by a period of drought, and by the continual working of the fishermen's dredge; here the sea-urchins come into season in the winter time, an unusual circumstance. Here among the cuttlefishes was found no octopus, either of the common or of the musky kind; here was no parrot-wrasse, nor any kind of spiny fish, nor sea-crawfish, nor the spotted nor the spiny dog-fish; and, again, from this lagoon, all the fishes, save only a little gudgeon, migrated seaward to breed. And though with no special application to the island, but only to the Asiatic coast in general, I may add that the chameleon, which is the subject of one of Aristotle's most perfect and minute investigations, is here comparatively common, but is not known to occur in Greece at all.
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References
Ritchie, âœDarwin and Hegel,â p. 39.
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Aristotle as a Naturalist 1 . Nature 91, 201–204 (1913). https://doi.org/10.1038/091201a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/091201a0