The extant scientific works of Aristotle deal with many different sides of biological research; the most comprehensive of them is his famous _History of Animals._ But not less interesting is the smaller work, On the _Generation of Animals (Peri zoon geneseos)._ This work treats especially of embryonic development, and it is of great interest as being the earliest of its kind and the only one that has come down to us in any completeness from classical antiquity.
Aristotle studied embryological questions in various classes of animals, and among the lower groups he learned many most remarkable facts which we only rediscovered between 1830 and 1860. It is certain, for instance, that he was acquainted with the very peculiar mode of propagation of the cuttlefishes, or cephalopods, in which a yelk-sac hangs out of the mouth of the fœtus. He knew, also, that embryos come from the eggs of the bee even when they have not been fertilised. This “parthenogenesis” (or virgin-birth) of the bees has only been established in our time by the distinguished zoologist of Munich, Siebold. He discovered that male bees come from the unfertilised, and female bees only from the fertilised, eggs. Aristotle further states that some kinds of fishes (of the genus _serranus_) are hermaphrodites, each individual having both male and female organs and being able to fertilise itself; this, also, has been recently confirmed. He knew that the embryo of many fishes of the shark family is attached to the mother’s body by a sort of placenta, or nutritive organ very rich in blood; apart from these, such an arrangement is only found among the higher mammals and man. This placenta of the shark was looked upon as legendary for a long time, until Johannes Müller proved it to be a fact in 1839. Thus a number of remarkable discoveries were found in Aristotle’s embryological work, proving a very good acquaintance of the great scientist—possibly helped by his predecessors—with the facts of ontogeny, and a great advance upon succeeding generations in this respect.
In the case of most of these discoveries he did not merely describe the fact, but added a number of observations on its significance. Some of these theoretical remarks are of particular interest, because they show a correct appreciation of the nature of the embryonic processes. He conceives the development of the individual as a new formation, in the course of which the various parts of the body take shape successively. When the human or animal frame is developed in the mother’s body, or separately in an egg, the heart—which he regards as the starting-point and centre of the organism—must appear first. Once the heart is formed the other organs arise, the internal ones before the external, the upper (those above the diaphragm) before the lower (or those beneath the diaphragm). The brain is formed at an early stage, and the eyes grow out of it. These observations are quite correct. And, if we try to form some idea from these data of Aristotle’s general conception of the embryonic process, we find a dim prevision of the theory which Wolff showed 2000 years afterwards to be the correct view. It is significant, for instance, that Aristotle denied the eternity of the individual in any respect. He said that the species or genus, the group of similar individuals, might be eternal, but the individual itself is temporary. It comes into being in the act of procreation, and passes away at death.