ABSTRACT
Aristotle's reputation as the founder of biology and its most important representative in antiquity rests not least of all on his research on sea life. Research conditions were favorable in this field and fishermen had a lot to tell about aquatic creatures. Aristotle and his Peripatetic collaborators gathered masses of information for their biological research which was primarily interested in aetiological explanation. Theophrastus shared Aristotle's interests. We have several fragments from his biological works dealing with aquatic animals and one treatise seems to be transmitted as a whole. It is entitled On Fish in our manuscripts, but according to its content the appropriate title appears to be On Creatures that Remain on Dry Land. 2 Place names show that 554Aristotle did a lot of his biological research on Lesbos and at the coasts of Asia Minor, 3 and we have every reason to assume that he cooperated intensively with Theophrastus in this field, even though there might have been individual interests. 4
