History of Animals, Volum 3

 We know that Aristotle spent two years in Mitylene, when he was about forty years old: that is to say, some three years after the death of Plato, just after his sojourn with Hermias of Atarneus, just prior to his residence at the court of Philip, and some ten years before he returned to Athens to begin teaching in the Lyceum (Dion. Hal. Ep. I ad Ammaeum, p. 727 R). Throughout the Natural History references to places in Greece are few, while they are comparatively frequent to places in Macedonia and to places on the coast of Asia Minor, all the way from the Bosphorus to the Carian coast. I think it can be shown that Aristotle’s natural history studies were carried on, or mainly carried on, in his middle age, between his two periods of residence in Athens; that the calm, landlocked lagoon at Pyrrha was one of his favourite hunting-grounds; and that his short stay in Euboea, during the last days of his life, has left little if any impress on his zoological writings.