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The History of Animals translated by D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson History in this context seems to denote a broad description of the lifecycle of animals, which is done first with basic anatomical features, then describing processes like sexual reproduction. Book I Aristotle says that the the back of the head is empty in all animals. It isn't as if he didn't ever cut open a head, because he mentions the cerebellum. He also mentions connections with the brain from the eyes and the nose. What does he mean by empty when he already describes how the head is completely filled up? The back of the head might refer to below the cerebellum. II An entire chapter is devoted to the chameleon. Elephants are also mentioned quite a bit. III The description of systems with veins in particular may hold well, but the proof of its accuracy is not equally easy in all cases. This emphasizes the observational nature of the book, because the reason is that veins are not easily seen. IV Most sentences make no mention of who is doing the observing and who is doing the recording. But one sentence says "they tell us that...", which makes me wonder if all of this is collected by a research team as guided by Aristotle as the project lead. V I don't know why some animals are thought to be spontaneously generated, specifically animals like sponges, sea anemones, certain kinds of shelled animals, and some kinds of insects that grow from grubs, and some others. My guess is that these conditions are all met: it is hard to find or observe mating, hard to observe the eggs, and the young only appear in very specific materials. The idea also seems to acknowledge that life originates somewhere. The first life forms came from inanimate material. So implicitly, Aristotle and his students realized that life is a natural part of the world and does not need conscious guidance to appear. Elsewhere, in the context of eggs, it is mentioned how it is possible that life can be engendered by methods besides mating and copulation. But the working assumption is that there is no other method since none is known. So since we know now that some animals reproduce asexually and other animals indirectly mate, I'm sure that this theory of spontaneous generation would be easily fixed. VI There is extensive description of how the chicken embryo develops in the egg. It's understood that different parts develop in different orders. I wonder though if Aristotle developed his major theories about teleology from these observations. Life is clearly a developing process going towards some developed end, and no prior step is "complete". VII Chapter 7 doesn't seem to fit because it's about animals in general. Same as Chapter 8. Chapter 7 says all animals develop in the same way, but it isn't clear what span of time "develop" refers to. Since it talks about when birth happens, develop properly refers to how the embryo develops. So even spontaneously generated animals would develop this way, that is, gradually and in parts. Since these 2 chapters diverge so far from the book (which is exclusively about human development), the editing must be off. VIII Aristotle said that the life of animals can be divided into procreation and feeding. He recognized that variety of animals and types of animals depend on locality, as well as their character in terms of how they act in their environment. These are all things implicitly necessary to understand evolution, so it makes sense why biologists can get so much use out of Aristotle's thinking about life. IX Much is said about animal intelligence. In particular, I like the observations about dolphins. Aristotle clearly acknowledges their capacity as social creatures, as well as elephants. There is a lot of detail about bees and of their social nature, not to mention the details about the hive. The message here is attention to detail, and looking at the world.