Gift about Life on a Deathbed

What would you want to be given as a gift if you were not likely to live much longer?  Of course, if in pain, medicine to alleviate that suffering would be welcome.  But in this instance, the bedridden man -- Charles Darwin -- had learned to live with a chronic illness through most of his adult life (even during his most fruitful years of scientific research and writing).  So, what turned out to be a welcome gift was a book to read.  And the book was on Darwin's favorite subject:  Nature.

Aristotle,
in an
old Latin translation

The gift, from William Ogle, was his new translation of a work by Aristotle titled The Parts of Animals.  That ancient Greek scientist's collection of observations about animals would have been of particular interest to Darwin.  Even though Aristotle's way of doing science was not grounded in the experimental methods of modern science, Aristotle's collection of investigations about animals had been part of the corpus of Western education for centuries.  Aristotle recognized the temptation researchers might have of not investigating animals they might consider useless, ugly, or even disgusting.  Therefore, in the book Darwin had received, Aristotle cautioned:

"For this reason we should not be childishly disgusted at the examination of the less valuable animals.
For in all natural things there is something marvelous."

Those words would have gone straight to Darwin's heart because they mirrored his own endless fascination with Nature's intricacies (something Darwin had commented on in the eloquent closing passage of his own book Origin of Species).

Thanks to the rapid growth of the railway system in England during the 19th century, frequent correspondence by mail had become a mainstay of life among many Brits, and Darwin had throughout his career relied upon a network of correspondents (some of whom became good friends) in order to ground his scientific studies.  Darwin always wrote cordially, expressing his appreciation.  And now, he did so again, expressing how even near the end of his own life he was grateful for the new perspective the gift of a book had provided.  Darwin wrote to Ogle, who had sent him the book:

"From quotations I had seen I had a high notion of Aristotle's merits, but I had not the most remote notion what a wonderful man he was.  Linnaeus and Cuvier

 [two pivotal 18th-century biologists] have been my two gods... 

but they were mere school-boys to old Aristotle."

William Ogle, upon receiving Darwin's letter with its complimentary remark about Aristotle, wrote back, saying:

"Thank you for your kind and eulogistic letter re [Aristotle's book].
It gave me much pleasure.  I am glad also to have added a third person to your gods."

Darwin died only three days after Ogle sent off his letter.  But Ogle's, Darwin's, and Aristotle's lives had all become tied together through a chain of correspondence.  And also through a mutual fascination with the forms of animal life in which Aristotle had found "something marvelous."

~~~

Are there any animals you find particularly fascinating?  Which ones?

(All of the quotations are taken from the "Aristotle" entry by James G. Lennox in

Evolution:  The First Four Billion Years, ed. Michael Ruse, et al., © 2009.  p. 427.)
(The images are in the public domain.)