e tomb of this great Arab _litterateur_, but
without success. His tomb has quite disappeared, and his name seemed
to be forgotten; but his work still lives, an everlasting monument of
his industry and his intelligence.

It will be remembered that the early Arab poets described men, women,
animals, and their surroundings in their effusive Kasidas before
prose-writing was established. Later on grammarians and philologists
began to write books on the different objects of nature and on the
physiology of man; also treatises on the horse, the camel, bees,
mountains, seas, rivers, and all natural phenomena. There were thus
laid down, though not a scientific, at least a philological basis, for
the future development of the natural sciences and geography. Such
monographs were only in later times collected in encyclopaedic works,
in which they were inserted in such a manner as to constitute various
chapters only, and no longer separate treatises.

Khalef-al-Ahmer (whom Suyuti declared to be a great forger, because he
pretended that some poems written by himself had been composed by
ancient Arab poets) wrote the first book on Arab mountains, and about
the poems recited concerning them. Ahmed bin-ud Dinveri wrote, in
addition to several grammatical and mathematical works, a book on
plants, and after him the grammarian Al-Jahiz wrote the first treatise
on animals, but more from a philological point of view than from that
of natural history. He wrote, moreover, on theology, geography,
natural history, and philology; but his most celebrated work is his
'Book of Animals,' in which he displayed all his knowledge of the
Arabic tongue. He was frightfully ugly, and obtained the surname of
Jahiz on account of his protuberant eyes. He himself informs us that
the Khalif Mutwakkil intended to appoint him as tutor to his sons, but
was deterred by his ugliness, and dismissed him with a present of ten
thousand dirhems. Al-Jahiz died A.D. 869, over ninety years of age.

Philology is a term now generally used as applicable to that science
which embraces human language in its widest extent, and may be shortly
called 'the science of language.' But in earlier times philology
included, with few exceptions, everything that could be learned--many
and various subjects, without particular reference to the meaning now
generally adopted concerning it.

There will be found among the Arab authors of this period many
philologists who also wrote upon other m