In his paper in Mat. Sb. (N.S.) 61 (103) (1963), Zareckiĭ associated with any binary relation α an ordered pair, (Lα Mα), say, of lattices and showed that α is a left [right] divisor of β if and only if
We provide an alternative proof of this result by embedding the category of relations in the category of sets. Our approach provides a unified treatment of several hitherto independent results, and gives new results for the category of partial transformations.