Pierre Belon (1517-1564) was a French naturalist. He studied medicine at Paris, where he took the degree of doctor, and then became a pupil of the botanist Valerius Cordus. Under the patronage of Cardinal Fran癟ois de Tournon, who furnished him with means for undertaking an extensive scientific journey. Starting in 1546, he travelled through Greece, Crete, Asia Minor, Egypt, Arabia and Palestine, and returned in 1549. A full account of his Observations on this journey, with illustrations, was published in Paris, 1553. Besides the narrative of his travels he wrote several scientific works of considerable value, particularly the Histoire naturelle des estranges poissons (Natural History of Strange Fish, 1551), De aquatilibus (1553), and L'Histoire de la nature des oyseaux (The Story of the Nature of Birds, 1555), which entitle him to be regarded as one of the first workers in the science of comparative anatomy. He was assassinated one evening in 1564.