The ancient authors either ignore or are ignorant of it. Nowhere, not even in that close observer Oppian, that omnivorous reader Athenæus, that pleasant purloiner Ælian, do we read a single line on the subject. But our astonishment, even if we allow for absence of microscope, grows acuter, when we are met in the three most important Ichthyologists before the eighteenth century, Belon, Salviani, and Rondolet, with the same silence. And this fate of silence apparently prevails even after Leeuwenhoek’s book; his discovery seems to have been lost or remained dormant in his pages till a score of years ago. Had microscopes existed in his day, we may surely surmise that Aristotle would have perfected the system of scale-reading, and thus have come down to posterity with his title of “The Philosopher of the many Rings” better earned than by his foppish affection for jewellery. In general opinion, the person most closely approaching the required Proteus or Nereus was his pupil and sometime friend, Alexander the Great. By placing at his disposal several thousand men to collect all kinds of animals and fishes from all parts of the then known world, he enabled him with the aid of the materials thus provided to produce his famous _Natural History_. For this identification we have not a scrap of internal evidence, but merely the assertions of much later writers, such as Pliny, Athenæus (who adds that Philip gave him 800 talents to finish the _History_), and Ælian.[255] Apart from want of intrinsic evidence, the fact that the geographical references and the fish mentioned in his _Natural History_ nearly all cluster round Lesbos effectually precludes the idea of Alexander “Hagenbecking” for Aristotle.[256] Internal evidence and reasons advanced by Professor D’Arcy Thompson[257] indicate that nearly all the animals and fishes with which Aristotle was practically acquainted belonged to Greece, Western Asia, and Sappho’s Lesbos (especially of the lagoon of Pyrrha), where he lived some four years just previous to his Macedonian trip, 343 B.C. The fishes in his _Natural History_, mostly given without any attempt at classification or really adequate description, number at least one hundred and ten. He discusses in some instances the anatomical characteristics, food, breeding habits, migrations, and modes of capture. Of the hundred and ten only some fifty fish can be scientifically identified; of which, all save six come from the sea. This figure of about one hundred and ten speaks wonders for his industry and knowledge. Even after the lapse of 1800 years separating him from the sixteenth century, the list of Mediterranean fishes compiled by Belon comprises but a hundred or so, and by Rondolet but some one hundred and sixty names. Risso, writing as late as 1810, furnishes no more than three hundred and fifteen, of which he asserts that eighty-eight had never been previously described.