®lj0 i. Hi. 3HtU IGtbraru Nnrtl) (Earoltna BMb QH26 M5 cop.2 This book was presented by FROM THE LIBRARY OF DR. H. H. T. JACKSON k vvcj- bridge. .#. If UNIVtRSny LIBRARIES 11" "I' III S00490260 L ^ LISTS \K ^XLL / THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE DATE INDICATED BELOW AND IS SUB- JECT TO AN OVERDUE FINE AS POSTED AT THE CIRCULATION DESK. **^ 7 1984 MAR P^^ •s: «^ti .^ m\$s h\ 5*.ii» r.. 2000 ■'^^ lOOM/5-79 ®t|F i, B. Bill M Nnrtli (Earoltna ^, QH26 M5 cop.2 This book war FROM TH^ DR. H. ' I.ISTS IK THE EARLY NATURALISTS 2H|F i. B. Hill Nartl) (Earalina f QH26 cop.2 This book ' FROM' DR. MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited LONDON • BOMBAY • CAI.CUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMII,LAN COMPANY NEW YORK • BOSTON ■ CHICAGO DALLAS • SAN FRANCISCO THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO THE EARLY NATURALISTS THEIR LIVES AND WORK (1530-1789) BY L. C. MIALL, D.Sc, F.RS. MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1912 COPYRIGHT PREFACE The old naturalists have occupied so much of my leisure of late years that it becomes a pleasant task to write about them. My chief aim is to induce such readers as I may find to make themselves better acquainted with the founders of modern natural history. To succeed in this attempt a rather strict selection of authors is indis- pensable, and I have been forced to omit many of those workers at details to whom natural history owes so much, in order to give fair space to the pioneers who opened out new fields of inquiry or introduced new methods. I cannot pretend, however, to have been altogether con- sistent and impartial in my selection. Some old works have been included, not so much because they are important as because they give a lively picture of the state of knowledge in a past age. Insects take up more than their due share of space, partly because they are really prominent in the works of early naturalists, partly because old books about insects give me more than com- mon pleasure. Such preferences are natural, and if not pushed too far, may be advantageous to the reader as well as to the author. No more fatal mistake can be committed by an author who undertakes to handle a wide subject than to fancy that he can attain to com- pleteness unless indeed his work takes the form of an index ; and it is almost as unpromising to divide the vi PREFACE space impartially among the persons or things to be described ; the product, however well-proportioned, is sure to be lifeless. Some readers will be surprised that I give so wide an extension to the word early as to include Buffon and the Jussieus. But the time has already come when hardly any eighteenth-century naturalists, with the exception of a few eminent students of life-histories (Swammerdam, Reaumur, &c. ), are searched for biological facts ; they are important merely as historical land- marks. Indeed zoology and botany have been so largely recast since 1859 that we shall shortly make Darwin's Origin of Species the era of modern biology, and consider all naturalists early who precede Darwin. It would have been a delightful task, had it been possible, to continue the history through the age of evolutionary speculation ; to show how Linnaeus' rude sketch of the kingdoms of nature has been enlarged ; how new studies, of which Linnseus had little conception (comparative anatomy, embryology, geographical distri- bution and palaeontology), have become strong and fertile ; how a fairly satisfactory grouping of the genera of flowering plants into families has been devised, how the cryptogams, long despised as casual and unstable, have been proved to rival the flowering plants in prac- tical importance and intellectual interest ; and how the history of extinct animals and plants has been illumi- nated by a theory of continuous descent. I need make no apology for having declined so vast and so difficult an addition. Some biographers seem to hold that nothing in the career of a man of science signifies very much except his eff'ective contributions to knowledge. His mistakes and failures, however many and grievous, are, they PREFACE vii think, no longer a matter of practical concern to any- body. When we examine a building we consider the plan and its execution, but do not care to be told how many bricks were dropped as the work went on. This is the amiable view of official eulogists, and also of some writers who, without being bound to praise, consider nothing but economy of the reader's time. It may appear to others that something besides positive achieve- ment should be recorded. We want to know not merely what was discovered, but how it was discovered. The discoveries, even of great men, have often been vitiated by serious mistakes, which have subsequently been cor- rected by men of far inferior power. Whether in such cases we give the whole credit to the man who first indicated the process, or to the man who first arrived at a true result, we do some injustice and at the same time misinform our readers, who may fairly claim that in important cases all the essential steps in the discovery should be laid before them. We want to know how some real discoverers began by trying false routes, how others were impeded by time-honoured delusions, or by overbold speculation. These things are part of the story, and cannot be omitted without loss. The classics of natural history are not very much studied in our own time. Few of them command hisrh prices, except those which treat of birds, or are richly illustrated, or exemplify the history of printing and engraving, and only public libraries take much pains to enlarge their collections. Hence the works of such early masters as Malpighi, Swammerdam, Ray, Leeuwenhoek and Reaumur are still within the purchasing power of ordinary students. I wish that every naturalist might deem some acquaintance with them as part of his equipment. viii PREFACE The time bestowed upon the Early Naturalists by author and reader will have been well spent if it helps them to attain a comprehensive view of biological his- tory, which is indispensable to the appreciation of recent work. History is necessary to the student who practises modern methods and is inspired by modern ideas, for the same reason that embryology is necessary to com- parative anatomy ; to know what is we must know how it came to be. I have to thank Dr. B. Daydon Jackson for corrections and elucidations of material value. L. C. M. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: NATURAL HISTORY DOWN TO THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY .... SECTION I. THE NEW BIOLOGY The Revival of Botany .... Otto Brunfels /^J^/^ vs:3/^ . HiERONYMUs Bock (Tragus) /^jiP yss-^. Leonhard Fuchs . z*^-^/ ^ /;fA^ . Valerius Cordus y«'>'^ -^.S^^. Conrad Gesner ycsy^.^y^ffs- . Matthias de L'Obel /Jisj^. /^'^^ . . Andrea Cesalpini (or Cesalpino) /sy^ y^^f^ Pierre Belon /j'/7,yj'zf'i/L Guillaume Rondelet ^6"^^ y^/f/i . . PAGE 12 17 20 24 28 28 32 36 40 45 The Encyclopedic Naturalists of the Renaissance 47 SECTION II. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS (EARLY TIMES TO THE END OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY) 51 CONTENTS SECTION III. SOME EARLY ENGLISH NATURAL- ISTS AND A CONTEMPORARY FRENCH AGRICULTURIST r^sy^J" ■y'Sr:^^- /^f^. ^^ William Turner. ^-^'T-'^y ^yj^j^ John Gerard y.-^^^"?y^i^:z. John Caius .y.^~^>a ./s^3. Thojias MourET.,<^('5^. .«^^^ . Charles Butler . /^'^—/'^■^ Olivier de Serres ^^f ~y^^Jf PAGE 76 78 79 84 87 93 SECTION IV. RAY AND SOME OF HIS FELLOW- WORKERS '^■^'^i^^'^-^'JoHN Ray and Francis Willughby /^3:ir.^ y/^y^ 99 Martin Lister /C'^'f- -^y/^'L 130 SECTION V. THE MINUTE ANATOMISTS Robert Hooke //^s: /^a^ Marcello Malpighi /^^^'P y^fAf- Nehemiah Grew .//^z//.-///2i Jan Jacobz Swammerdam /^3-;:^./^^iJ Antony van Leeuwenhoek ^-^^2 //^3 135 145 166 174 200 SECTION VL EARLY STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE ANATOMY Francesco Redi //^s.ii./^fJ' 225 THE NEW BIOLOGY HIERONYMUS BOCKi 1498-1554 New. Kreutter Bueh von imderscheydt, wiirekung imd namen der Kreutter, so in teutschen Landen wachsen, &c. Fol. Strasb. 1539. Parts 1 and 2 only. Kreuter Buch, &c. Second edition, with figures. Fol. Strasb. 1546. Part 3, also with figures, was published at the same time. Hieronymi Tragi de stirpium, maxime earum quae in Germania nostra nascuntur . . . libri tres . . . interprete Davide Kybero. 4to. Strasb. 1552. Bock, a native of Baden, was destined by his parents for the cloister, but when he grew to manhood, he came, hke Brunfels, under the influence of the new doctrines, began to study medicine and botany in addition to theology and philosophy, and at length took the decisive steps of removing to Zweibriicken in the Palatinate, setting up as a schoolmaster, and marrying. It was no doubt an important promotion for him when he was called upon to attend the duke of Zweibriicken as physician, and to supervise his botanic garden. Some years later he was rewarded by a sinecure canonry at Hornbach, a few miles from Zweibriicken. Protestantism was then spreading in all parts of the Rhineland, and in all ranks of society. The dukes whom Bock served, and even the abbot of Hornbach, favoured the Keformation, so that Bock, a married man, who had moreover undertaken the functions of a Lutheran pastor, without apparently any ecclesiastical sanction, was allowed for many years to share the emoluments of an ancient monastic foundation. In spite of his varied employments, for he is believed to have practised both divinity and medicine, he found time for oft-repeated botanical excursions, which he 1 The latest and best account of the life of Bock is that of F. W. E. Roth {Botam. Centra/bL, 1898, pp. 265-271; 313-8; 344-7). For information con- cerning the botanical merits of the Krduterbuch E. L. Greene's Landmarks, pt. 1, pp. 220-64, may also be consulted. BOCK 21 generally made in peasant's dress, so as to excite little notice. The excursions gradually took a wide range ; many places between the Rhine and the Moselle were visited, besides countries as distant as Switzerland and Tyrol. Bock, who seems to have been a sociable, friendly man, became known in some of the Rhenish cities, especially to Brunfels and other botanists of Strasburg ; he corresponded also with Gesner of Zurich, A young man, named Jacob Theodor of Berg-zabern, who was afterwards known throughout Europe as Tabernsemontanus, was first a pupil and afterwards an assistant of Bock's during this Hornbach time. Bock himself tells how his honoured friend Brunfels came out on foot from Strasburg to Hornbach (some sixty English miles) and pressed him to write in the mother- tongue a new herbal for the instruction of the German people. Bock spent some fifteen years amidst these occupa- tions, disturbed only by symptoms of waning health, but about the year 1548 he was called upon to face changes disastrous to his happiness. By this time the herbal in its German form was complete. The pros- pects of the Reformation in Germany had meanwhile become clouded ; a new duke of Zweibriicken and a new abbot of Hornbach withdrew their support from the Lutheran pastor, who was obliged to remove for a time to Saarbriicken, where the count, whom Bock had treated successfully in grave illness, ofi"ered hospitality and countenance. All his ten children except two died before him, and the only surviving son was deprived of the Hornbach canonry, which the father had resigned in his favour.^ Amidst calamities like these a wasting 1 Bock returned to Hornbach not long before his death, and was buried there ; whether he was reinstated as pastor is not known. 22 THE NEW BIOLOGY disease, from which Bock had long suffered, carried him off at the age of fifty-six. The new Kixiuterhuch (parts 1 and 2) appeared about six years after Brunfels' visit to Hornbach. It was written in German, and at first contained no figures. The inclusion of many more plants, the fuller and more lively descriptions and the homely style gave it a marked advantasje over the German translation of Brunfels' Eicones, which was soon discontinued. The second edition of the Krduterbuch, besides a new third part, were made more attractive by the introduction of figures, drawn by David Kandel, a young self-taught artist of Strasburg, who worked under Bock's eye at Hornbach. The figures are smaller and coarser than those of Brunfels ; many are copied from the herbal of Fuchs, which appeared in the interval between Bock's two editions. In front of the illustrated editions of the herbal we find a portrait of Bock at the age of forty-six, drawn by David Kandel. An arch of florid design occupies so large a part of the page that scanty room is left for anything else. The naturalist is shown in half- length side-view, holding a flowering bulb in his hand. The straight hair is combed down to the neck behind, and over the top of the forehead in front ; both chin and cheeks are shaven. The features are good, the well-shaped nose prominent, the eyes a little up- turned, the expression grave but pleasing. In the coloured copies all that is attractive disappears. Hieronymi Tragi de stirpium libri tres is a translation of the herbal into Latin by David Kyber of Strasburg, the figures of plants being retained. The Latin trans- lation was never reprinted, but seven editions in German appeared after Bock's death ; the last bears the date of 1630. BOCK 23 After nearly four hundred years we still read with pleasure Bock's accounts of the pistillate flowers of the hazel, the deciduous calyx of the poppy, the pistil of the bilberry, the rooting stems of water-lilies, the hooks on the twining stem of the hop, and the shooting-out of the seeds of the wood -sorrel. He notes more dis- tinctly than any other botanist of the time the difference between stamens and styles, but has no true notion of their physiological office, not even recognising that one or both may be found in every flower. Particulars of place and environment are added, and the descrip- tions are enlivened by curious details, which give them in many places a vivacity to which the text of Brunfels or Fuchs makes no approach. Bock's grouping of plants is largely traditional. He accepts the ancient division into trees, shrubs and herbs. Since he gives no synoptic tables, far less family-names with definitions, it is a matter of conjecture what groups of genera, if any, he regarded as marked out in nature. He inherited from Theophrastus and Dioscorides a few natural groups : — Umbellifers, Thistles, Chicories, Legumina, Labiates, Solanaceous plants, Crucifers, Mallows, Catkin -bearing and Cone-bearing trees, none of them precisely limited, and to this list he added the (unnamed) Borages. He places rosemary and lavender among the Labiates, notwithstanding their woody stem. The nettle and the dead-nettle are described in close succession, though the distinctive generic names of Dioscorides are quoted. We find groups founded on habitat {e.g. water-plants), or on usefulness to man {e.g. kitchen-herbs), or on habit {e.g. Serpentarise or climbers, a group of Bock's own pro- posing). The special value of floral characters was then unsuspected. 24 THE NEW BIOLOGY In his preface Bock shows the importance of associa- ting related or similar plants, and pours contempt on the alphabetical arrangement. We must not however read the modern meaning into his word affinity. There is no reason to suppose that the notion of a common descent for the pea and the bean, or for rosemary and lavender, had ever crossed his mind.^ LEON HARD FUCHS 1501-1566 De Historia Stirpium Commentarii insigiaes, maximis impensis et vigiliis elaborati, adjectis earundem vivis plusquam quingentis imaginibus nunquam antea ad naturae imitationem artificiosius effictis et expressis, Leonarto Fuchsio medico hac nostra aetate longe clarissimo autore, &c. Fol. Basil. 1542. Fuchs was born at Membdinoeu in Bavaria in 1501. His original calling was that of schoolmaster, and his favourite study ancient literature. At the university of Ingolstadt, a stronghold of Catholicism, he made acquaintance with the writings of Luther, and was thereby led to adopt Protestantism. Having graduated in arts, he studied medicine and took his doctor's degree in that branch, becoming after a short interval professor of medicine. He w^as next made physician to the mar- quis of Brandenburg at Anspach, and became favourably ^ " Und hab in gedaohten biichern gemeinlich disen Process und Ordnung gehalten, nemlich das ich alle Gewachs so einander verwandt iind zugethou oder sonst einander etwas anlich seind und verglichen zusammen doch under- schiedlich sind. Und den vorigen alten Brauch oder Ordnung mit dem ABC wie das inn den alten Kreutter buchern zu ersehen hindan gestelt. Dann die Gewachs nach dem ABC in Schrifften zuhandeln gar ein grosse ungleiehheit und irrung geberen, &c." (Bock's Preface.) The word affinity or some sj^nonym appears in Aristotle [De Partihus, IV, 6, 3), and in the natural history books of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- turies A.D., such as those of Fuchs, Dodoens, Gesner, Cesalpini, Caspar Bauhin, Grew and Ray. Nowhere is a clear distinction drawn between atEnity and general similarity of structure or habit. FUCHS 25 known by his successful treatment of an epidemic. In 1533 he was invited to resume his professorship at Ingolstadt, but was soon driven away by Jesuit in- trigues, and returned to Anspach. On the death of his patron, the margrave, he accepted a call to the university of Tubingen, which had just adopted the Eeformed faith, and here he remained from 1535 till his death (1566). Among his published works are treatises on medicine and human anatomy. Fuchs' first contribution to botanical literature con- sisted of critical remarks on medicinal plants written for Brunfels' Krduterhuch. He then aspired to produce a herbal of his own, and in 1542 issued his Historia Stirpium, which was immediately translated into German. The text, like that of Brunfels, is drawn chiefly from ancient authors ; the descriptions are briefer, and show a much slighter acquaintance with the original texts. The arrangement is alphabetical according to the G-reek names of genera. Fuchs says in his preface that he would have liked to associate " cona:enerous herbs," as Dioscorides had done, had such a sequence been permitted by the pictures ; this excuse is uncon- vincing. Plants are often associated on the ground of a quite superficial resemblance ; Viola includes the violet, Hesperis and the snowdrop ; Stellaria Holostea and Parnassia come under the Grasses.^ Fuchs shows ^This remark holds good for early botanists in general. Names like rose and violet had no definite botanical meaning ; the Christmas Rose, the China Rose and the Rock Rose have no affinity with the rose of the hedge, nor with one another ; the Dame's Violet and the Dog's-tooth Violet no athnity with the sweet violet and the pansy. In the same way primitive medicine gave the name of Hepatica to an anemone, and also to the cryptogamous Marchantia, of Verbena to Verbena officinalis and also to the groundsel ; and of Consolida (healing) to a number of quite different herbs, which agreed only in having a reputation for closing wounds (Greene, Landmarks, pp. 176, 231). 26 THE NEW BIOLOGY little interest in living nature, or in adaptation to environment, takes notice of few rare plants, and does not restrict himself to native species ; he thought chiefly of meeting the wants of the pharmacist. The five hundred woodcuts of the Historia Stir^niim probably surpass in artistic quality any long series of botanical figures that has ever been published, though they are not remarkable for minute accuracy. Each plant fills a folio page, on which no letterpress beyond the name is allowed to encroach. The outlines are clear, and there is little or no shading.^ Sometimes but not often the flower and fruit are shown on detached branches ; the structure of the acorn is displayed in separate figures ; on the other hand the flowers of the nettle are indicated by mere dots. A whole tree from the roots to the top branches may be shown in one view ; then the leaves are out of all proportion to the trunk. In the drawing of an entire walnut-tree there are only about a score of leaves, each perhaps one-fifth of the total height ; it would of course have been better to show only a single branch, as is done in the case of the savin. Greek vase-painters could draw unmistakable olive-trees, with only one or two leaves apiece, but natural history cannot allow such liberties. Fuchs' own portrait occupies the frontispiece, while his draughtsmen (Heinricus Fiillmaurer and Albertus Meyer) together with his engraver (Vitus Rodolphus Specklin or Speckle) share a page at the end of the book. A glossary of difficult terms is prefixed to the Latin Historia Stirjpium, but omitted in the German trans- 1 The practice of drawing plants in outline probably originated in the colouring of the figures. Early woodcuts are often coloured by means of stencils, but this is never the case with Fuchs' figures. FUCHS 27 lation. The anthers are called by Pliny's name of " apices," but not clearly distinguished from the styles. The " glume " is defined as the sheath which encloses each grain in a grass-spike. The "stipule" is the sheathing leaf of a grass. A bulb is defined as a rounded tunicated root, which is retrograde ; Theo- phrastus knew better than this. When he comes to explain the botanical umbel, Fuchs, like a true scholar, goes a little out of his way to give the history of the word, quoting the Greek skiadeion and the Latin umbella, " qua mulieres vultum vindicant a sole et sestum arcent." Cesalpini mentions parasols as being used on journeys, and they are figured in Anglo- Saxon MSS. Fuchs' letters show that he laboured during many years to extend his Historia Stirpium. In 1565 he was ready to publish three parts of what he charac- teristically describes as an excellent, noble work, con- taining in each part more than five hundred beautiful and carefully drawn figures, together with the histories of the plants. He sought for a wealthy patron to meet the cost, and got the promise of one contribution. But in the following year Fuchs died, and the work was never produced. The manuscript is believed to have been extant many years later, and the engraved blocks were long used to illustrate the works of other botanical authors. It is unpleasant to have to say of an author who rendered real service to botany that his character lacked modesty. Fuchs was in the habit of blowing his own trumpet, and sometimes he blew it loud, as in the title of his great w^ork. He showed no jealousy of other botanists, and often praised what they had done. 28 THE NEW BIOLOGY Father Plumier gave the name of Fuchsia to one of the most beautiful of the garden- flowers which we have received from America. VALERIUS CORDUS 1515-1544 The brief and tragic history of Valerius Cordus (son of the Euricius Cordus already mentioned) can only be glanced at here, because few naturalists can acquaint themselves at first hand with the surviving fragments of his work, which were piously collected by Gesner. Dying at twenty-nine, he had already made his mark in science. He is remembered as the dis- coverer, or one of the discoverers, of sulphuric ether, as the first to say in print that young ferns spring from the light dust borne on the back of the leaves, as one of the first to trace the origin of coal to lono--buried vege- tation. The term pollen, which had been used by Pliny as the name of meal or any other kind of fine dust, Cordus applied to the dust emitted by anthers. He has a special name (pajyilionaceous) for the flower of Legu- minosse (Gesner had already compared pea-blossom to a butterfly).^ CONRAD GESNER 1516-1565 C. Gesneri Opera Botaniea . . . Omnia ex Bibliotheca D[ora. ] C. J. Trew nunc primum in lucem edidit et praefatus D[om.] C. C. Schmiedel. 2 pt. Fol. Norimbergse. 1751-71. Gesner studied at Strasburg, Paris, Basle and Mont- pellier (under Rondelet), and became skilled in the •" Greene {Landmarks of Botanical History) has given a detailed and appreciative notice of the botanical work of Valerius Cordus. GESNER 29 ancient languages as well as in medicine and natural history. Like all the German and Swiss botanists of his generation, he was a stout Protestant. His own father fell in battle, fighting with Zwingli to defend Zurich against the Catholics of the forest cantons. Conrad Gesner too perished in the service of Zurich. In 1564 the city was ravaged by a plague, which Gesner, who was the public physician, combated suc- cessfully, though to the injury of his health. Next year the plague reappeared, and Gesner as before stuck manfully to his post. This time he did not escape, but was carried off before he had quite reached the age of fifty. Gesner was the most learned naturalist of the six- teenth century, but he was much more than a naturalist. He had been professor of Greek at Lausanne, and good judges have reckoned him among the best Greek scholars of his age. His Bibliotheca Universalis, a bibliogra- phical account of all writers in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, his PandectcB Universales. a methodical index to all the knowledge recorded in books, and his Mithridates, an attempt to arrange all the languages of the world according to their affinities, are works of vast extent and labour. He only lived to produce one comprehen- sive biological work, his History of Animals, and that was not quite complete. For a great History of Plants, which he was much better qualified to write, he had made preliminary studies of high promise. Among the many proofs of his multifarious know- ledge we may cite his little book on fossils,^ where he discourses upon all things which are dug out of the earth, and figures not only basaltic columns, encrinites, ^ De rerum fossilium, lapidum et geramarum figuris et similitudinibus Liber. 8vo. Tiguri. 1565. 30 THE NEW BIOLOGY belemnites, &c., but stone-implements and even a lead- pencil ! He says that this last is made of what some called English antimony, set in a wooden handle. The figure resembles a modern pencil-case for the waistcoat pocket. Gesner, laborious, learned, enlightened, unselfish, ever zealous to extend the knowledge of nature, had, like Linnaeus two hundred years later, correspondents in every country, and suggested or helped many an inquiry. If somebody was wanted to take up a neglected branch of natural history, or to edit the writings of a naturalist who had been cut off before his time, Gesner, loaded as he was by tasks of his own, was the readiest to lend a helping hand. Belon, Eondelet, Aldrovandi, Valerius Cordus, Caius and Turner are to be found in the long list of those whom he befriended or advised. Even the Congregation of the Index had recourse to his Bihlio- theca for information concerning heretical authors, though they ungratefully put him into the list along with the rest. Letters of Gesner give some faint notion of what his History of Plants might have done for botany. In one place he explains that flower, fruit and seed afford better indications of affinity than leaves. It can easily be perceived, he says, by the organs of fructification that Staphisagria and Consolida are of kin to Aconite, &c. He asks a friend to send him a drawing of a tulip-fruit (the tulip was then a rarity in western Europe) to show the arrangement of the seeds, which he wished to figure. He recognises genera, or natural groups of species, as many had done before him, and says that there are hardly any herbs which do not fall into genera of two or more species. The ancients had described one gentian, but he knew often or more. He distinguished GESNER 31 varieties from species, and demanded proof of constancy in the characters before he would allow that they were of specific value. We are told that Gesner had brought together no fewer than fifteen hundred figures, many of them drawn by his own skilful hand, while nearly four hundred had been enOTaved on wood. The drawinojs and wood-blocks were handed down after his death from one botanist or publisher to another. Some were used to illustrate Mattioli's Epitome (1586). At last the collection, sadly diminished, was bought by Christopher Jacob Trew, an eminent physician of Nuremburg, who valued good books of natural history. Trew entrusted the thousand fisfures which came into his hands to the careful editor- ship of C C. Schmiedel. Many of Gesner's drawings were now engraved on copper and coloured after the originals ; some of the woodcuts were printed off, while others, which had suffered injury, were re-engraved on copper. Two great folios, which include the botanical works published in Gesner's life-time, were thus pro- duced, which give the best notion now to be had of Gesner's industry and skill as a botanist. In these interesting and often beautiful figures we find details of flowers and fruits never so well presented before. It is a question whether he used lenses or not ; sharp sight may perhaps have sufiiced. Gesner was so short-sighted as to require concave spectacles for the perception of distant objects. Like another short-sighted naturalist (K. E. von Baer), who was remarkable for his power of distinguishing the minute details of living things, Gesner may have turned the imperfections of his eyes to good account. The pleasing usage of naming the genera of plants after meritorious botanists was introduced by Gesner. 32 THE NEW BIOLOGY It was extensively adopted in a later generation by Father Plumier (1646-1704). Gesner's History of Animals is noticed elsewhere. His publications, though copious and learned, only partially explain the reverence with which after ten generations naturalists and scholars still regard the name of Conrad Gesner. MATTHIAS DE L'OBELi 1538-1616 Plantarum seu stirpium Histoiia . . . cui annexum est Adversariorum volumen. Fol. Antw. 1576. From the age of sixteen L'Obel was a diligent observer of plants. He betook himself at the age of twenty-seven to Montpellier, in order to study under Rondelet, then at the height of his fame. Here he paid close attention to the plants of Languedoc and the Cevennes, which afterwards yielded him much material for description. Rondelet died in 1566, and his manuscripts were left to L'Obel as his favourite pupil. He did not return home at once, for the terrible Alva was governor of the Low Countries from 1567 to 1573, and many of the unfor- tunate Flemings were glad to take refuge in England. L'Obel was one of these, and his first botanical work^ was produced in London. We next find L'Obel in Antwerp, where he practised medicine. His repute ^ Biographies of L'Obel by Edward Morren are to be found in Bidl. Fid6r. Soc. d' Hortictdture de Bilgique, 1875, and in Biog. Nat. de Belgique. "^Stirpium Adversaris nova . . . autoribus Petro Pena et Matihia Lobelio. Fol. Lond. 1570. Pena had been a fellow-student of L'Obel at Montpellier and a diligent collector of the plants of Languedoc. Legr6 (La botanique en Provence au X VP Steele, 1899) has shown that the Adversaria was largely the work of Pena. L'Obel and Pena left Montpellier for England together ; Pena remained there for several years, and afterwards became very successful as a physician in France, L'OBEL 33 became so considerable that lie was made physician to William the Silent. Not long after the assassination of the prince L'Obel was appointed superintendent of the physic-garden set up at Hackney by Lord Edward Zouche. He now busied himself with English botany, and was the first to note several species native to Middlesex. Among the English botanists whose acquaint- ance he made was Gerard, whom he esteemed very lightly. One of L'Obel's daughters was married to a London citizen (James Coel, of Highgate), and this connexion may have helped to detain him in England ; he died (no doubt in his daughter's house) at Highgate in 1616. L'Obel can hardly have been an amiable man ; he was inclined to boast, and often wrote contemptuously of his predecessors or contemporaries. But he was laborious and sagacious, and botany owes a good deal to him. The Lobelia, named after him by Plumier in 1702, helps to keep his memory fresh. His botanical works {Adversaria, Observationes, Kruydboeck, Icones, &c.) were much esteemed in their day, and went through several editions. The modern reader finds the Latin style dry and clumsy, and the definitions few and obscure, while there is far too much of an obsolete pharmacy. The woodcuts engraved expressly for these works are small and of no great merit. Larger and better ones are often borrowed from the books of Dodoens or Clusius, with both of whom L'Obel lived for some years on intimate terms ; Chris- topher Plan tin, who published for all three, was no doubt glad to repeat in a succession of books the blocks which he had paid for. We shall now notice some features of these volumes which are of biological interest. c 34 THE NEW BIOLOGY L'Obel makes a distinct advance upon the systems of earlier botanists. Not content with tacitly adopting what he took to be a natural sequence, like the early German botanists, he enumerates in synoptic tables the species of one genus, or the genera of one family. His primary division is the ancient one into trees and herbs ; then the herbs are divided according to the form of the leaves. Division into Monocotyledons and Dicotyledons is foreshadowed by the separation of plants with narrow, simple, parallel-veined leaves from those with broad, reticulate-veined and incised leaves. His system is really based on leaf-form, and he unites clover, oxalis and hepatica merely because all have trifoliate leaves. He sought to proceed from the simple to the complex, and for this reason among others began with the grasses, which he took to be flowering plants of peculiarly simple structure. From the grasses he went on to irids, lilies, &c., being guided, as he says, chiefly by the pointed and simple leaves. Alisma, Sagittaria, some Orchids, &c. are widely separated on account of their broad leaves. The cereal grasses lead in another direction to the Crucifers ; here the point of resemblance is suitability for human food. Cabbages are associated with lettuces, which are of like habit and "fruitio," while both are used in cookery. Though the shrubs and trees are recognised as distinct groups, the shrubby Leguminosse are laudably, but incon- sistently, put next to the herbaceous genera. The ferns, even such unusual forms as moon wort and adder's tongue, are kept together. L'Obel's works show an extensive acquaintance w^th the rare plants of Europe, such as Pyrola, which he had found at Berchem near Antwerp, Cypripedium Calceolus from Switzerland and Tyrol, and many more from L'OBEL 35 Languedoc or the Cevennes. Sprengel^ gives a long list of species which L'Obel was the first to describe. L'Obel has also something to say about the Papyrus antiquorum, which he had seen in the botanic garden of Pisa, about Sarracenia, Tillandsia and other newly imjDorted American plants, about the wheat-trade of Antwerp, the manufacture of beer and the trenching of celery. Drugs of recent introduction are of course noted, and many therapeutical experiments are recorded. He tells with pride of plants brought at great cost to Flanders from Constantinople, Greece, Italy, Asia, Africa and America, and cites among the glories of his native land, the eminent botanists and gardeners which it had produced. The highest place is given to De L'Escluse (Clusius). L'Obel seems to have been the first naturalist to call attention to the fact that the mountain plants of warm countries descend to low levels further north. His words are : — " quse jugis montium calidarum regionum proveniunt, eadem in planis, silvis, silvosis et depressis regionum septentrionalium exeunt." ^ This observation of L'Obel's was the starting-point of inquiries wdiich have been pursued with ever-widening grasp to our own time. Linnaeus ^ showed that alpine plants are nearly the same all the world over, while Kamond* observed that the zones of vegetation on high mountains may answer to horizontal zones bounded by parallels of lati- tude, a relation which Humboldt demonstrated on a far larger scale. ^ Gesch. der Botanik, Vol. I, p. 311. - Frefa.ce to Stirpiimi Illustrationr^s. ^Phil. Bol., §3.34. •* Raniond, a naturalist of no real weight, had the honour of influencing the geological speculations of Cuvier, and is once mentioned in Darwin's Origin o/Species. His Voyages au Motd-Purdu (1801) has some little historical interest. 36 THE NEW BIOLOGY ANDEEA CESALPINI (or CESALPINO) 1519-1603 De Plantis Libri XVI. 4to. Florent. 1583. Little is known of the personal history of Cesalpini. He studied at Pisa (where he was introduced to botany by Luke Ghini, a teacher of great reputation) succeeded Aldrovandi as director of the botanic garden at Bologna, and professed medicine and botany in the university of Pisa, where again he had charge of a botanic garden. In old age he removed to Rome, becoming professor at the Sapienza and physician to the Pope. In Cesalpini's time and in the very city where he taught, ancient beliefs were for the first time submitted to experimental verification. Galileo, who had attended Cesalpini's lectures, investigated the swinging lamps of the cathedral at Pisa in 1583, the year in which the De Plantis appeared; in 1588-91 he refuted the Aristo- telian doctrine of falling bodies by dropping weights from the leaning tower. We are not told what Cesalpini and Galileo thought of one another, but it is not difficult to guess. Cesalpini is reckoned among the physiologists who anticipated the discovery of the circulation, though he is not known to have made any experiments of his own ; he was also one of the few sixteenth-century naturalists who recognised the real nature of animal and vegetable fossils. His published work shows him to have been an acute, observant man, full of such knowledge as was then accessible, and not afraid to express his opinions, even when they diff'ered from those of the people about him. Could he have realised that in botany as in all natural sciences he was but a be- ginner, he might have done much more than he actually CESALPINI 37 did. But he was confident and over-emphatic. In the dedication of his De Metallicis to the Pope we find a passage which shows that though he claimed for himself that liberty of opinion which the Catholic Church grants to those in whose loyalty it has confidence, he made no secret of his inclination to restrict scientific thought in less orthodox teachers. He repudiates an unnamed author because he held opinions contrary to the prin- ciples of philosophy, and also as a man condemned (explosus) by the church.^ Cesalpini's De Plantis gives a short account of plant- physiology as understood by a Peripatetic philosopher of the sixteenth century. We find a discussion of the question whether the seat of life is difi'used or concen- trated ; it is finally placed just where the stem and root meet, a point which has neither morphological nor physiological importance. The pith, we are told, is the seat of innate heat ; this strange belief was founded on the resemblance of the pith surrounded by a cylinder of wood to a spinal cord enclosed by a vertebral column. The flower is said to exist, partly to protect the young fruit, partly of necessity, because the plant becomes turgid with vapour. Plants have no sexes, because in them the genitura is not distinct from the materia. The chief function of the leaves is to shade the buds. Cesalpini's system of plants has been praised by Ray and Linnpeus. He threw over the tentative method practised by L'Obel and others, in order to bring for- ward a new and logical method of his own. The ancient division into trees and herbs is of course respected, and ^ I suppose that the author aimed at was BerHardiiio Telesio, who had attacked the doctrines of Aristotle, and tried to supersede philosopliy by methodical observation. His treatise De natura rerum juxta propria principia libri II (Rome, 1565) was condemned in the Index of Pope Clement VIII, that vei-y Pope to whom Cesalpini dedicated his De Metallicis. 38 THE NEW BIOLOGY the seedless plants, which are imperfect, bred of putre- faction, a»nd intermediate between plants and inanimate things, are separated from the more perfect plants. Then he arranges his flowering herbs by the number of divisions of the seed-vessel, but uses also, without strict subordination, other characters, such as the superior or inferior ovary and the position of the embryo in the seed. These characters, which have proved valuable to later systematists, are not always employed with knowledge. Cesalpini confuses divisions of the ovary with seeds, or even with flowers ; he has no conception of any such morphological unit as the carpel of modern botany ; and his brief characters drawn from the embryo^ are sometimes unintelligible, all the more because neither figures nor synoptic tables are supplied. The student finds himself compelled at length to depend chiefly on the illustrative genera cited. Thus judged, Cesalpini will be found to have made no addition to the short list of truly natural families already recognised by L'Obel. Instead of increasing the number he destroyed or spoilt some necessary groups, leaving only the Umbelliferse intact. Cesalpini stood aloof from all the botanists of his time, whom he never quotes, and they paid no attention to him. Keftelius in the Amoenitates AcademiccB (who is only a cloak for Linnseus) says truly that Cesalpini dwelt alone in the house which he had built. Cesalpini offers here and there good observations on the biology of plants. He remarks - that ants gnaw the embryos of grains of corn, to hinder them from sprouting when stored underground. He tells how 1 It is possible that Cesalpini got the hint of them from Theophrastus. 2^1ian, De nat. animalium, II, 25, may have guided Cesalpini in this passage. CESALPINI 39 weak plants, unable to support their own weight, may- clasp other plants with their tendrils, and shows that a tendril may spring from the axil of a leaf, or in the place of a leaf, or from the apex of a leaf. He names clematis as an example of a plant which climbs with the help of its leaf-stalks, ivy as one which climbs by what he calls " hooks," arranged along the stem like the feet of a centipede ; others are said to twine like snakes. He remarks that climbing plants appear to have some power of perception, for they feel about for a suitable support, and grasp it when found (Chap. xi). We find also a good account of the way in which wood-sorrel throws out its seeds, of the creeping stem, flowers and fruit of the white and yellow water-lilies, &c. These plants, or most of them, had been carefully studied before Cesalpini by Bock, Fuchs and L'Obel, sometimes by Theophrastus as well. Cesalpini's account of the seed and seedling is memor- able because he clearly states that in many plants there are two seed-leaves, while in the wheat-grain there is only one. He is further aware that the seed-leaves may contain a store of food, and that in leguminous plants they may never leave the seed.^ 1 The passages of the De Plantis M'hich treat of the flower and the cotyledons were attentively studied by Linna;iis, whose annotations can still be read in the library of the Linnean Society. 40 THE NEW BIOLOGY PIERRE BELON 1517-1564 Les observations de plusieurs singularitez et choses m^morables trouv^es en Grece, Asie, Judee, Egypte, Arabie et autres pays estranges redigees en trois livres. 4to. Paris. 1553. L'Histoire naturelle des estranges poissons marins, avec la vraie peinture et description du dauphin. 4to. Paris. 1551. De aquatilibus libri duo cum iconibus ad vivam eorum effigiem. Sra. oblong 8vo. Paris. 1553. Three editions of a French translation, in folio, quarto and octavo, appeared in 1555. One is entitled " La nature et diversitt^ des Poissons, avec leurs pourtraicts, &c." Sm. obi. 8vo. L'Histoire de la nature des Oyseaux, avec leurs descriptions et naifs por- traicts retirez du naturel. Fol. Paris. 1555. Some twenty years after the revival of botany naturalists began to describe and figure direct from the objects the fishes and birds of Europe. Zoological research may have been a little retarded by the absence of that professional motive which impelled physicians to examine closely their native plants. The facilities aff"orded by the markets, together with the special knowledge handed down, generation after generation, by fowlers, falconers and fishermen, had no doubt their eff'ect in deciding what animals should first be taken in hand. Belon tells us how, when dwelling in foreign cities, he used to study the birds and fishes which were brought to market. During his stay in Padua he was accustomed to leave home every Thursday evening and travel all night by boat, so as to reach Venice next morning. There he stayed on Saturday and Sunday, employing his time with observation of birds and fishes, and discourse with fowlers and fishermen. On Sunday nisfht he took boat ag;ain, and was back at his studies by Monday morning. Nothing is said about personal observation of live birds and fishes, but this was not neglected when opportunities ofi"ered. BELON 41 The life of Belon was full of labour and excitement. He was born in Maine, near the city of Le Mans. As a young man he was patronised by the Chancellor of France, by a bishop, and by two cardinals, Tournon and Chastillon. Thus aided, he went to Germany, where he studied botany under Valerius Cordus, among others. After this he set out to explore the Mediterranean countries, travelling in Turkey, Greece, and the Greek islands, Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and the Sinaitic Peninsula (1546-9). Shortly after his return he paid a visit to England, where he fell in with the Venetian ambassador, Daniel Barbaro, who showed him drawings of three hundred fishes of the Adriatic, and permitted him to copy them. The rest of the naturalist's life was extremely unlucky. The French king granted him a pension, which was left unpaid, and Belon was reduced to great straits. At last he was set upon in the Bois de Boulogne and murdered ; the assassin was never discovered. The chief writings of Belon are : — (1) His travels, in which he sets down all that he could learn or conjecture respecting the remarkable animals named in ancient authors {infra, p. 54). (2) His dissertation on the dolphin. (3) His book of aquatic animals, which has been cast a little into the shade by the more exact book of Rondelet ; and (4) his book of birds, the best which the sixteenth century could produce. At the time of his premature death Belon was translating Theophrastus and Dioscorides. Belon's dissertation on the dolphin occupies a large part of his Histoire Naturelle des Estrayiges Poisso7is Marins. Its primary purpose was to identify and describe the dolphin represented on ancient works of art. The author easily decides that the dolphin of the 42 THE NEW BIOLOGY ancients was the common dolphin of the Atlantic shores, often confounded with the porpoise. True fishes which had been called dolphins, such as the sturgeon, tunny, &c., are figured and shortly described. In a second part the anatomy of the dolphin is discussed ; its brain is said to be very like that of a man ; the embryo in the uterus is figured. The hippopotamus is described from a live specimen which Belon had seen in Constantinople, and compared with ancient sculptures. The shells of the argonaut and pearly nautilus are figured and compared. — ,-^.^»^^^^^^/Gr-=/v- y^J^-/ ^^<^ ^^^.^^kx /^^^ The book on Aquatic Animals aims at giving by means of descriptions and figures some rough notion of the various creatures which inhabit the waters. Cetaceans, the beaver, otter, seal, water-rat, tortoises, true fishes of many kinds, mollusks, crustaceans and brittle-stars are included. There is also a small admixture of animals which Belon did not profess to have met with, such as the fabled horse of Neptune, the sea-wolf, rather like a hyaena, which was thought to haunt the shores of England, and the fish which resembled a monk. Each animal is shortly described, and its names in different languages are quoted. Identification of the fishes men- tioned by ancient writers is a prominent feature. The illustrations are somewhat rude woodcuts, which never- theless give a fair notion of the diff'erent species. There is no regular classification, and hardly any definitions of groups, large or small, but animals which would now be referred to the same class or order are usually kept together. The systematic arrangement indicated by the succession of species is based upon Aristotle. As usual in the works of early naturalists, too much weight is given to the general form and the place of abode. The text is largely a compilation, and most of the figures BELON 43 are believed to have been copied from Barbaro's drawings, j^^x/^/^-^' ^^ ^^^r ^V-^-^^^'c ^/"f^ /^^j-^^^sj^ s**r,/^/'^ jz^^ Belon's History of Birds is the most important of his /isVa' contributions to natural historv, and was during many years the best book on the subject. It is a handsome. ^v^^'^/; folio of near 400 pages, illustrated by many hand-^r^^^/ /iC coloured woodcuts, one as a rule to each bird that is ^•'^«' described. About two hundred birds are included ; they -^^ ^-^ are nearly all European, but Belon does not hesitate to "^-/^v^ describe with them such foreigners as the ibis, the birds yT^'/jv - of paradise, and parrots. In his preface he claims to be the first to give " naif portraicts des serpents, des poissons et des oyseaux : le naturel desquels nul autre n'auroit encor fait voir avant nous." ^ His draughts- man was Pierre Goudet, of Paris, whose work does not fully deserve the praise that it receives from Belon. The attitudes are often awkward, and the markings of the plumage are but poorly shown. This was no doubt contrary to the author's intention, for he says in his preface that birds differ from one another chiefly in colour ; " touts ont quasi les iambes, ongles, bee et plumes de mesmes," which is, of course, far too strong a statement of the case. There is little to mark the scale of the difierent birds ; the ostrich and the sparrowhawk, for instance, are nearly of a size. The descriptions are unmethodical, and often very slight. Belon is not aware that a small diflerence, if constant, may serve to dis- tinguish one species from another, and the current popular names (in French) are precise enough for all his purposes. Yet he distinguishes a good many kinds or sorts of birds, and brings together all that seem to him generally similar in structure and mode of life. He does his best to amuse his readers by relating bits of his ^Gesuer's bird figures were published in the same year (1555). 44 THE NEW BIOLOGY experience in foreign lands, such as the decoying of sparrowhawks on the Propontis, or by discussing the etymology of the French names of common birds, or by giving the points of a good falcon, or by describing the succession of the dishes at a French banquet, or by explaining why the trail of a woodcock is eatable. A few sentences of "Naturel" (natural history) are often introduced into the description, and we find occasional hints as to the use of birds in medicine, such as that the blood of the partridge is good for sore eyes. Ancient authors are regularly quoted, and pains are taken to identify the birds of which they speak. Fabulous stories are mentioned, though with due scepticism ; Belon does not believe, for example, that the sparrowhawk is the father of the cuckoo, nor that barnacle-geese are gene- rated from floating wrecks (they have been seen, he tells us, to lay eggs) ; nor that the chameleon feeds on air. What we should now call orders of birds are indis- tinctly recognised, but only as convenient headings. It was far too early for any naturalist to inquire how there come to be natural assemblages of birds, or why one principle of arrangement is to be preferred to another. Belon adopts Aristotle's groups as far as they go ; he recognises the birds of prey, the swimming birds, and the waders with long legs, joining with these last the kingfisher and the bee-eater ; his remaining groups are the birds which nest on the ground, then a very miscel- laneous group (crows, pigeons, parrots, &c.), which agree only in being of fair size and nesting in any situation ; his last section consists of the songsters. Tradition com- pelled Belon to put the bat among the nocturnal birds of prey, but he did not really take it to be a bird. In his introduction Belon gives on opposite pages large figures of a human skeleton and that of a bird. RONDELET 45 naming all the principal bones, and thus indicating their homologies. This is an early and interesting example of that comparative method which has since proved so fertile. Belon was much interested in the enrichment of French gardens by new exotic species, and is said to have introduced the cedar of Lebanon into western Europe. GUILLAUME EONDELET 1507-1566 Libri de Piscibus Marinis. Fol. Lugd. 1554. Universse aquatilium Historise pars altera. Fol. Lugd. 1555. Rondelet was professor of anatomy at Montpellier, then a provincial capital, famous for its medical school. It is only seven miles from the Mediterranean, whose coasts are full in view from the celebrated Promenade de Peyrou. In Rondelet's day the sea-fisheries were important, and offered good opportunities to an anatomist who sought to enlarge biological knowledge. His repu- tation as a naturalist attracted many students to Mont- pellier ; among the number were Dalechamps, Clusius, John Bauhin and L'Obel — a list of great distinction, which might easily be enlarged. With Rondelet, as with other writers of his day, fishes include aquatic animals of every kind. In his own mind he distinguished, as Aristotle had done long before, the blood-holding (vertebrate) fishes from the bloodless (invertebrate), but by treating all together in his anato- mical account, he rendered most of his generalisations unserviceable. Copious extracts from ancient writers weary the reader, and show how imperfectly Rondelet foresaw that his own observations were to lay the 46 THE NEW BIOLOGY foundation of a new ichthyology, which would convert the descriptions of Pliny and iElian into mere historical curiosities. He discriminates and names such true fishes as were known to him, and often describes in succession several species which are now placed in the same genus or the same family, such as the " brames de mer" (sea- breams), or the different kinds of Turdus, Raia, and Galeus. The invention of the genus was ascribed by Haller and Linnaeus to Gesner, but it is probably as old as natural history. Aristotle enumerates two or more camels, eagles, kingfishers, tits, woodpeckers, wagtails, thrushes, &c. What is modern is the use of the word genus as a technical term, and the reference of every species to its genus, verbal usages which came in gradually, and were at length formally inculcated by Linnaeus. Eondelet indicates groups more extensive than genera, but without subordination or definition. There are no synoptical tables, and the groups are mere headings. Like other naturalists of that age, he was content to reckon the whales as fishes, though he was well aware of the differences between them. He regularly noted the structure and arrangement of the gills in every true fish that came before him. In these two books nearly two hundred and fifty species are described, most of them being figured, and there is rarely a doubt as to the fish which is meant. The modern names are regularly assigned to his figures in the British Museum Catalogue of Fishes (1859-70). Rondelet was of great use to Willughby and Ray {infra, p. 112) and through them to later ichthyologists. The task upon which all were engaged proved to be one of unsuspected difficulty. Though Ray, Linnaeus, Cuvier and other zoologists, the strongest of their time, laboured at it, the end has never come in view. It RONDELET 47 seems that the highly specialised and dominant group of Teleostean fishes has become adapted in most intricate ways to the exigencies of aquatic life, and that no simple principle of division is likely to prove natural here, any more than in the class of Birds, Ichthyolo- gists, like ornithologists, can only remove this or that blot, with little hope of complete success, even in the distant future. Yet another book on fishes was brought out nearly at the same time with those of Belon and Rondelet, by Hippolito Salviani (1514-1572), a physician of Rome, whose work, Aquatilium Anirualium [Historia], dated 1554, was only completed in 1558, as the colophon shows. The three authors were all physicians, and all were patronised by Cardinal Tournon. Salviani's book is chiefly remarkable for its beautiful engravings on copper, which in some copies are delicately coloured. THE ENCYCLOPAEDIC NATURALISTS OF THE RENAISSANCE We must briefly notice a class of writers who were highly esteemed in their day, though most of them did little to advance natural history, because they relied upon other aids than that first-hand study, which is essential to lasting progress in the interpretation of nature. Encyclopaedic learning was the passion of sixteenth century scholars, who loved to transcribe copious extracts from ancient authors into their Adver- saria in the hope of some day digesting them into books. Zoology and botany were treated like history or philology by writers who failed to perceive that Pliny and iElian were by no means trustworthy witnesses on 48 THE NEW BIOLOGY matters of biological fact. The encyclopcedic naturalists were far more eager to amass information than to sift it. Their works are now and then languidly turned over by some historian of science, who perhaps collects singular fables as indications of the prevailing state of knowledge, until at length he sweeps the whole away as futile, remembering that obsolete encyclopaedias, which reflect, not the opinions of the age in which they were compiled, but a medley of opinions of all preceding ages, are not of much value, even as historical documents. The best of the encyclopsedic naturalists of the Re- naissance were Gesner and Aldrovandi. Gesner stands high among early botanists, as we have elsewhere (swpra, p. 30) tried to show. But he was much else besides a botanist, and would have claimed to be called a poly- histor, i.e. a scholar who set himself to acquire and expound all learning. Gesner's History of Animals ^ was written in Latin, and appeared volume by volume from 1551 to 1587, the mammals, oviparous quadrupeds, birds, fishes and other aquatic animals being treated in succession. A volume on serpents and a description of the scorpion, which was to have formed part of the insects, were not published till after Gesner's death. The whole work extended to 4,500 folio pages, and was adorned by several hundred woodcuts. So far as possible, each animal is described under eight heads: — (l) names, in various languages; (2) native country, external characters, &c. ; (3) mode of life ; (4) habits and instincts ; (5) capture, rearing, domestication, &c. ; (6) uses as food ; (7) uses as medicine ; (8) literary and moral uses, historical allusions, &c. The primary arrangement is, of course, Aris- totelian, but with a number of changes for the worse ; 1 Historia Animalium. 5 vols. Fol. Tiguri. 1551-87. ENCYCLOPAEDIC NATURALISTS OF RENAISSANCE 49 beyond this the animals are taken in alphabetical order, though nearly allied forms are often grouped about a type. There is no regular subordination of groups, no precise nomenclature, no anatomical intro- ductions ; the figures are largely borrowed. It gives some notion of the state of zoolo2;ical knowledoe in the second half of the sixteenth century that Gesner should have grouped the hippopotamus, whales, fishes, mollusca, &c. as aquatic animals, that the bat should be described among the birds, and that the scorpion should be represented as possessing elytra. The History was republished, abridged, and translated, so that it must have been highly esteemed. Not only Gesner but almost all the naturalists of the sixteenth century put the bat among the birds and the whales (sometimes the seals and the hippopotamus also) among the fishes, or at least in a group of aquatic animals, though the more knowing showed that they were aware of the difi'erences which rendered such associa- tions scientifically indefensible. It is surprising that they hardly ever ventured to throw over the mediaeval grouping and go back to Aristotle, whose name com- manded so much respect. Wotton and Aldrovandi did so in the case of the bats,^ but not even Kay dared to separate the whales from the fishes. What is perhaps the last survival of such a grouping is to be found in Artedi's Ichthyologia (1738), which was edited by Linnaeus. Less known to fame was Edward Wotton (1492-1555), a London physician, who published a Latin treatise De differentiis animalium (fol. Paris, 1552) nearly at the same time with the first part of Gesner's History. ^ Wotton treated the bats as mammals, Aldrovandi as intermediate between mammals and birds ; Aristotle seems to have hesitated between the two views. D 50 THE NEW BIOLOGY Wotton methodised the zoology of Aristotle, and drew up the first formal classification of animals. His book is sagacious and careful, but dry. It was little read, and exerted no appreciable influence upon the progress of zoology. Adam Lonicer (1528-1586), a physician and botanist of Frankfort, published a Naturalis HistoricB Opus Novum (2 vols. Fol. Francofurti. 1551), the largest and best part of which is botanical. This work is more remarkable for its longevity than for its quality ; it was continually re-edited, and only disappeared from the book-market in the eighteenth century. Ulysses Aldrovandi of Bologna (1522-1605) was, like so many other early naturalists, a physician and botanist. At first he pursued many diff'erent branches of study, but by the advice of Rondelet selected zoology and botany as his own special province. Aldrovandi was director of the botanic garden of Bologna, which he had largely helped to found. He was also a diligent col- lector, and bequeathed a museum to his native city. In old age he began to publish an extensive treatise on animals, which was to form part of a still wider scheme.^ ^^^^, John Jonston (1603-1675) was a weak successor to /f/ 4^ z^-^/t*/ Aldrovandi, from whom he borrowed largely. His illustrated works enjoyed a great reputation, being republished or translated many times. Jonston was of Scotch descent, though born in Poland; he studied both at Thorn and St. Andrews. To explain how this came about would require a historical discussion, in which the Wyclifites, Hussites and Moravians would all find a place. 1 Only the birds (Fol. Bononise. 1599-1603) and the insects (1602) appeared during Aldrovandi's lifetime. The quadrupeds, viviparous and oviparous, the serpents and dragons, the fishes and whales, the bloodless animals and the Dendrologia were edited and published posthumously (Fol. Bononise. 1606-7). »-w« SECTION 11. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS (EARLY TIMES TO THE CLOSE OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY) Voyages of discovery go back to times whose history is inextricably mixed with legend. Phoenician merchants sailed over the Mediterranean, and beyond the pillars of Hercules to the Fortunate Islands and the western shores of Spain, bringing to Tyre and Sidon the products of Arabia, Egypt and India, as well as of northern countries rarely visited except by barbarian traders. Herodotus, the first Greek historian, travelled in Persia, Egypt and Scythia, and was able to gratify the curiosity of his countrymen by telling them, among many things of greater importance, about the crocodile of the Nile, and the artificially impregnated date-palm of Babylon, Ctesias, a Greek physician, who had lived at the court of that Artaxerxes, whom Cyrus the younger tried to dispossess, wrote accounts of Persia and India, in which elephants, parrots and bamboos are noticed. Greek armies were led by Alexander to the Punjab, returning by the Indus and the Persian gulf. It is just possible that from this last source of information Aristotle learned what he knew about the anatomy of the ele- phant, and how the Bactrian camel differed from the Arabian. 52 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS In the narrative of the voyage of Nearchus (one of Alexander's generals) from the Indus to the Tigris, mention is made of the tiger, of the cotton-plant and of the use of cotton in weaving, of rice, of silk, of the sugar-cane, of tortoise-shell, and of oriental spices and drugs. The fleets of the Ptolemies made regular trade-voyages to Arabia, tropical Africa and perhaps to countries yet more remote. Ptolemy Philadelphus set up a menagerie at Alexandria, in which elephants, rhinoceroses, bufi'aloes and ostriches were kept. Aga- tharcides, an Alexandrian scholar of the second century B.C., described strange animals of Ethiopia, the girafl'e, the rhinoceros, the baboon, various monkeys and the spotted hysena. Theophrastus knew something about the banyan-tree, the citron, the tamarind, which was reported to fold up its leaflets at night, and the thorny Mimosa of Egypt, whose leaves droop when touched. Under the Eoman empire trade with distant countries was perhaps as much hindered as encouraged by the Roman passion for dominion. Such books as the Natural History of Pliny show that opportunities of enlarging geographical knowledge were not neglected. Roman emperors sent expeditions to the shores of the Baltic for the sake of amber, and to tropical Africa for the sake of birds of rich plumage. Elephants, camelo- pards and ostriches were exhibited and slain in the circus. Ivory, silk, pearls, spices, dyes and drugs were regularly imported. During the long decline which followed the downfall of the empire such knowledge as the ancients had possessed about exotic animals and plants shrank to a meagre stock of perverted recollections. Though the elephant was kept in mind by the bestiaries and the THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS 53 first book of Maccabees, it was often confounded with the camel, ^ Monkeys, lions, leopards and lynxes were still well known. Of the acquisitions made between the years 200 and 1000 A.D. none perhaps was more considerable than the importation of the silkworm in the reign of Justinian. Constantinople was during many centuries the great European emporium of eastern wares. The wars of Saracens and Christians did little for geographical knowledge or industry to compensate for the interruption of peaceful intercourse which they created. In the thirteenth century the passionate zeal which had stirred up so many Holy Wars died out, but travel and exploration revived as the progressive movement (see pp. 7, 9) gained strength. Towards the end of the thirteenth century Marco Polo and his companions reached China (Cathay, as it was then called) by land, taking advantage of that relaxation of restrictions which followed upon the conquests of the Tartars. The barriers were soon restored, and China became once more impenetrable. Elsewhere geographical knowledge and commerce advanced steadily. Venice, Genoa and Florence became enriched by eastern trade. Dates, balsams and flax were regularly imported from Egypt ; the sugar-cane was planted in the islands of the Mediterranean, and cotton in the south of Europe. In the sixteenth century, and indeed long before, the northern parts of Spain supplied Europe with whale- bone and train-oil, sending their ships out into the Atlantic to capture the Eight Whale. ^ We read however of an elephant sent to Charlemagne by Haroun-al- Raschid, and of another given to our Henry III. by Louis IX. of France; there is a tolerable though small figure of one in the Meditationes of Johannes de Turrecremata, Rome, 1467. A giraffe was imported by the emperor Frederick II. in the thirteenth century. 54 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS Few of the innumerable pilgrims to the Holy Land brought home anything better than chance scraps of information about the remarkable animals and plants of Syria. Among the most enterprising was one of the latest pilgrims, Bernard de Breydenbach, a canon of Mayence, who travelled in Palestine and Arabia during 1482 and following years. He wrote an account of what he had seen,^ which is illustrated by very curious woodcuts. A painter named Eemich made one of the party, and drew several strange animals, among which was a giraffe (" serafia ") ; no earlier portrait of this animal, taken from the life, is known. Breydenbach was probably the first traveller whose descriptions and figures were multiplied by the printing-press. Mena- geries, containing remarkable foreign animals, now began to be common ornaments of the courts of Italian princes. Here would come in order of time the great geo- graphical discoveries of Vasco da Gama and Columbus. We shall however defer this topic until we have tried to show by two or three examples how the new spirit of the Kenaissance stirred up explorers to examine more closely the natural products of countries less distant from civilised Europe. Pierre Belon, of whose life a sketch has already been given (p. 40), visited the eastern end of the Mediterranean during the years 1546-9. In 1553 he published a little book called Les observations des l^lusieurs singularitez et chases memorables trouve'es en Grece, Asie, Judee, Egypte, Arabie et autres j)'^ys estranges, which was highly esteemed, passing through several editions, and being translated into Latin by the ' Opusculum sanctarum peregrinationum, Mainz, 14SG, often reprinted and translated into several modern languages before 1500. Some beautiful manu- script copies also exist. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS 55 celebrated naturalist Clusius, as well as into German. A portrait prefixed to the Latin translation shows Belon as a strong and handsome man with short curly hair and full beard ; he was only thirty-two when he returned from the east. The Turks were then at the height of their power. Belon, like Busbecq (p. 56), admired their hardihood and temperance in this season of conquest and glory. He describes the menagerie of the sultan, which was kept in an ancient temple at Constantinople. Lions were tied each to its own pillar ; sometimes they were let loose. Besides lions there were wolves, onagers, porcupines, bears and lynxes. Genets were kept in the houses like cats. Belon says that the Turks loved flowers, and were skilful in gardening. Parsley was called macedonico in the market of Constantinople ; hence perhaps the macedoine of modern cookery. Smilax as^era and Tamus communis were used as salads. The giraffe, buffalo, gazelle, chameleon and Egyptian crocodiles are described, some of them being figured. Belon refutes the popular fable that the chameleon lives on air, but w^as induced to figure a mummied serpent with wings and clawed feet, which, he tells us, was able to fly from Arabia into Egypt. ^ Much to his surprise, he found the skin of a six-banded armadillo, which must have come, he knew, from South America, in the hands of a troop of wandering Turkish drug-sellers ; he secured the specimen and figures it. We find a particularly interesting description of Crete. Belon begins by lamenting that the Greeks, to whom the arts and learning owe so much, held not a foot of ground as their own, the Turks dominating the inland parts, and the Venetians the shores of what had been the Greek empire. The ancient language was 56 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS still spoken ; though corrupt, it was, Belon thinks, more similar to ancient Greek than the Italian dialects to Latin. He notes some customs which still prevail in Crete, such as the practice of sipping wine, but at the same time quenching thirst with large draughts of water. He did not fail to visit the ruins of ancient cities, all of which the Cretans were inclined to call by the celebrated name of Labyrinth. A particular account is given of the mode of collecting the balsamic resin called Ladanum, which was much esteemed by the ancients, and of which Pliny had related a ridiculous fable, viz. that it was combed out from the beards and shaggy legs of goats which had browsed in the forests of Arabia. There is a lengthy description of his discovery of the parrot- wrasse (Scarus), which Aristotle had said (wrongly, as it happens) to be the only fish that ruminates. The Cretan sheep and goat are described and figured. Concerning the latter Belon makes two startling remarks, viz. that its horns may be four cubits long, and that the number of rings on the horns tells how many years the animal has lived. In this way Belon goes on pleasantly from one country to another, discussing with little method animals, plants, useful arts, drugs, and the ruins of ancient buildings. One heading runs thus : — " Modestie des soldats turcs, et d'un serpent nomme Jaculus, et de I'oiseau nomme Onocratalus." Many of the woodcuts are fair, but the long-tailed ichneumon, whose tail is cut ofi" and shown separately above the body, makes us smile. Augier Ghislen de Busbecq (1522-1592) was a Fleming, who was twice sent by the emperor as ambassador to Soliman II. Historians have drawn valuable information from his descriptions of the THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS 57 Turks in the days when they threatened all Christen- dom. Being not only learned, but urged by an unbounded curiosity, Busbecq inquired into strange facts of every kind. His love of gardening caused him to send some plants, cultivated by the Turks but un- familiar in Europe, to his correspondents in Vienna. Gilles, in Latin Gillius^ (1490-1554), was a naturalist who made the same venture as Belon, and like him, was unkindly treated by fortune, for his calamities hindered him from bringing home the fruits of his toil. He was a native of Alby in Languedoc, who betook himself to the study of the ancient naturalists, but gained practical experience of zoological research by examining the fishes of the Mediterranean and Adriatic. He was patronised by a celebrated free-thinking bishop^ Armagnac, and commissioned by the king, Francis L, to visit the Levant in quest of ancient or modern know- ledge. His necessities were not duly provided for, and he found himself left destitute in Asia Minor. All his collections were lost, and he was compelled to enlist in the Turkish army for the sake of a subsistence. At last he made his escape to France (1550), and rejoined his patron, now a cardinal, at Rome, Before setting out on his travels Gilles published iElian in Latin, rearranging his matter, and identifying the species where possible ; after his return he wrote on the topography of Con- stantinople. Among his publications is a description of an elephant sent from Persia to the sultan.- Gilles met with it and its Hindoo mahout at Aleppo, where the elephant died. He notes the gentleness of the animal, ^ This Petrus Gillius must not be confounded with Petrus Gillius or ^Egidius of Antwerp (1486?-1533), who was the friend of Erasmus and Sir Thomas More, and edited the first edition of the Utopia. '^ Ehphanti Dencriptio, misaa ad R. cardinalem Armagnacum exurhe Berrhoea Syriaca, aulhore Petro Gillio, 8vo. Lyon. 1562. 58 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS supposed to be not more than four years old, and its love of play. He easily refutes the belief that the elephant had but one joint in its limbs. Finding two live elephants at Constantinople, he measured the larger one. With this insignificant contribution recommences the study of the structure and natural history of the elephant, interrupted for some nineteen centuries. The same little book contains notes on the "marine elephant" (hippopotamus), which also he saw alive at Constanti- nople, the giraffe, and an ichneumon, which last he kept alive for some time. Siegmund von Herberstein, who visited Moscow in 1516-7 and again in 1526, as ambassador from the emperors Maximilian and Charles V., described Russia for the gratification of the curious.^ Among other things he mentions some remarkable wild animals, the bison, the elk, the ibex or some allied species, and the onager or wild ass. He says of the Lithuanian bison that it has a mane, long hair about the neck and shoulders and a beard ; the eye is large and fierce, as if on fire ; the horns are wide apart, and there is a hump on the back (not a real hump, but only high withers) ; the animal smells of musk. Whatever Olaus Magnus (Magni or Stor) titular archbishop of Upsala (b. 1490, d. 1557) may have been as a describer of national customs and a collector of folklore, he sinks to the mediseval level in his descriptions of animals. His History of the Northern Nations^ tells of the glutton, which after gorging himself makes ready for another meal by squeezing his body between two trees, of the kraken, which is able to swallow ships, ^ Rerum Muacoviticarum Commentarii, Fol. Vienna. 1549. Translated as "Notes upon Russia," 2 vols., Hakluyt Soc. 1851-2. 2 Historia de gentibus sepientrionalibus. Fol. Rome. 1555. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS 59 of the sea-serpent a league and a half long, and of swallows which pass the winter at the bottom of lakes and rivers. Some of these fables long continued to figure in natural history books. The interest with which Europe received the announce- ment of a new continent across the Atlantic was heightened by the report that it was peopled by strange animals and plants, unknown to ancient or modern naturalists. The species of North America, it has since been discovered, for the most part belong to genera or families which occur in Europe or temperate Asia, but the West Indian islands, Brazil and Mexico (and it was these of which the Spanish navigators brought intelli- gence) possess a far more peculiar fauna and flora. On his return from his first voyage (1493) Columbus exhibited to the court of Ferdinand and Isabella, not only six Indians waiting to be baptised, but live parrots and a few stuffed animals. In subsequent voyages he paid such attention to natural history as his troubled and wandering life permitted.^ The Decades of Peter Martyr Anglerius^ were a chief source of information to the readers of Europe during the early years of the sixteenth century.^ Anglerius had never crossed the Atlantic, but his official position as chronicler of Indian affairs and member of council for the Indies made him acquainted with every new exploration. He ^ Humboldt has remarked the closeness of Columbus' observation of all natural phenomena. Among other things he noted the solitary seed of Podocarpus, an aberrant South American conifer. Hardly any American explorer before Joseph de Acosta, he adds, showed any power of generalising the facts of observation, except Columbus (Examtn Critique, Vol. Ill, pp. 20 foil.). The Letters of Columbus do not seem to me to bear out the statement as to his frequent and close observation of natural objects. "^ So named from his birth-place, Anghiera on Lake Maggiore. ^ De Orbe JVovo Decades, Alcala, 1516. There is a translation into Italian in the third volume of Ramusio. 60 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS had entertained in his own house Columbus, Sebastian Cabot and other well-known navigators, and took a lively interest in their enterprises. Moreover, he could write from scanty materials interesting sketches of what had been seen in the New World, and these sketches, when collected into Decades, circulated far and wide. He tells how Pope Leo X. liked to read them to his sister and the cardinals.^ No marvel of the animal life of America interested early explorers more than the opossum, which figures in several narratives. Anglerius describes it as a creature which had the snout of a fox, the tail of a monkey, the ears of a bat, the hands of a man and the feet of an ape. It climbed trees, and carried its young in a pouch, like no other known animal. The first man to set down in writino^ something like a connected account of the natural history of the New World was Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes (1478-1557). Oviedo had in his youth served as page to Prince Juan, son of Ferdinand and Isabella. In 1513 he was sent out to America as inspector of mines, and after this he served the crown in various capacities, residing long in Hispaniola, of which he was alcalde. On his retirement from foreign service he acted as chronicler of the Indies. Oviedo laboured during a great part of his life at a General and Natural History of the Indies ^ A summary of this was published in 1526, and the first part of the full history in 1535. The whole is now" accessible in print. West Indian Mammals. We are told by Oviedo that when Hispaniola (also called Hayti and St. ^Letter o£ Anglerius, Dec. 26, 1515. " Historia general y natural de las Indias. Fol. Salamanca, 15.35. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS 61 Domingo) was first visited by Europeans, it contained five animals (he means mammals), besides snakes, &c. Four of the five were called by Indian names, Hutia, Chemi, Mohui, Cori, the fifth kind being the native dog. It would require an intimate knowledge of the native mammals, and especially of their quality as food, to identify all of these by means of Oviedo's descriptions, for though he tells us which were good to eat, he says little about teeth and claws, which are more serviceable in the determination of species. Of the native dogs he says that the Indians used to rear them in their houses, but that at the time of writing none were left. They were of all colours ; some were smooth-haired, others woolly like sheep. The ears were erect. The dogs of the Indians were used in hunting, but were not equal to those which had been brought from Spain. They were dumb, and did not howl or bark when beaten. The Tapir. Oviedo's Danta or Beori (Indian name) must be the tapir, but the description is very vague. We are told that it was as big as a mule, that its skin was dark, and that it had no horns. The flesh was good to eat, and the feet delicious when boiled for twenty-four hours. The animal was hunted with dogs, and had to be hindered, if possible, from entering water, where it became formidable. The Sloth. According to Oviedo the sloth takes a day to travel fifty paces. Its legs cannot support its weight, and the body trails on the ground. It climbs trees, gripping the boughs with its long claws, and sings by night, uttering six notes in regular descending order. It will remain on a tree-top for many days together, and no one knows what it feeds on, but since it keeps its head turned towards the wind, Oviedo thinks that it must live on air. Such tales as these were often repeated 62 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS by naturalists, some of whom, like Ulloa, had seen a live sloth, while others, like Buffon, had not. Buffon severely criticises Nature for turning out a creature so ill-equipped and so wretched. At last Charles Waterton showed that the sloth is by no means the pitiable object which BufFon and his forerunners had painted; it is in all respects well-adapted to its mode of life, and only becomes grotesque or unhappy when removed from its accustomed haunts, and hindered from using its natural powers. The Anteater. Of the ant-bear, as he calls it, Oviedo says that it has the skin of a bear, a long snout and wo tail I It is defenceless, though it sometimes bites (Oviedo seems not to be aware that the anteater has no teeth). It feeds on ants (really on termites), which it manages to secure in spite of the strength of their habitations. In South America, Oviedo explains, the ant-hills are as high as a man, and being alternately moistened by rain and baked by the sun, become as hard as stone. The entrance is close to the ground, and so small as to admit nothing bigger than an ant. But the ant-bear finds cracks on the surface of the fortress, into which it inserts its tongue ; by continual licking these are widened more and more until an effective breach is made. He knows nothing of the use of the great claws in demolishing an ant-hill, or in self-defence. The Manatee. Oviedo describes this animal as a fish, though he is aware that it has a leathery, not a scaly, skin, and teats for suckling its young. Birds. Oviedo gives Spanish names to the birds of the West Indies and South America, entertaininsf little suspicion that they were distinguished by peculiarities more important than differences of size or colour. Lively descriptions are met with in his pages, as when he says THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS 63 of the humming-birds that they are no bigger than the top of the thumb, and when plucked, only half as big ; that they fly too fast for the movements of the wings to be followed by the eye, and when first seen are taken for hornets. Nest and bird together, he goes on, may weigh no more than twenty-four grains, while the feet and claws are as delicate as in the miniatures of an illuminated prayer-book. The plumage is of all gay colours, such as green and gold, and the bill is as fine as a needle. Though so small, they are bold enough to fly at the eyes of anyone who tries to plunder their nests. It is easy to imagine the delight with which such particulars were read for the first time. American Plants. Many edible and medicinal plants are described, among the rest, maize, cassava, the pine- apple and the prickly pear. We are told of the singular efficacy of a prickly pear poultice in curing fractured limbs, and of the edible fruit. The carmine colouring matter is also noticed, but no mention is made of the cochineal insect. India-rubber balls are said to be used in an Indian orame.^ Oviedo's figures of animals and plants are very rude, but much allowance must be made for the clumsiness of the wood-engraver.2 Maize, pine-apple, cacti, &c. are represented for the first time in a printed book ; the manatee is one of the few animals fio;ured. ^ This last I quote from Darmstadter's Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften, having failed to verify his reference, or to discover the passage in the enormous and unindexed volumes of the Madrid edition of Oviedo. The first mention of a lead-pencil occurs in Gesner's little book on fossils (supra, p. 30), but the first mention of india-rubber as useful for erasing pencil marks is as late as 1770 (see Thorpe's Priestley, p. 72). -This clumsiness will strike any reader who recollects the high quality of the wood-engraving executed in Germany, Holland and Flanders during tlie first quarter of the sixteenth century ; Italy and France were not far behind. The reproductions of Oviedo's figures in Ramusio are much better executed than the originals. "64 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS As a naturalist (I have not read his civil history) Oviedo is not considerable. He does not claim to possess any special gifts, training or experience ; indeed we may say that in his time there was no instance of a man who confined himself to so narrow a department of learning as natural history. He writes merely as one who was well acquainted with tropical America, had observed the things about him, and had noted all that was told him. Pliny and Albertus Magnus were still authorities, while the Elucidcmus and the Ortus Sanitatis, though packed with fables, furnished a large part of the natural knowledge of the reading public. But the spirit of enlarged curiosity was abroad, and although Oviedo shared many beliefs at which we cannot but smile, he had the thirst for knowledge which pro- perly belongs to a contemporary of Copernicus and Regiomontanus, of Brunfels and Bock, of Leonardo da Vinci and Albert Durer, of Erasmus and Sir Thomas More. Oviedo exhibits the simplicity of Herodotus ; Acosta, who comes next before us, possesses the higher quality of thoughtfulness ; exactness we must not expect for another hundred years or more. ^. Acosta's Natural and Moral History of the Indies^ a concise but interesting sketch of the natural pheno- mena, useful products and native tribes of America, was first published in Latin at Salamanca in 1588. It was so well received that it was quickly translated into Spanish, with large additions. The History, thus recast, was three times reprinted in Spain, and translated into Italian, Dutch, French, German and English.^ The author, Joseph de Acosta, was a Jesuit father, who had sailed to Cartagena in 1570, being then about thirty 1 Grimston's translation of 1605 has been reprinted, with introduction and notes by the Hakluyt Societj', 1880. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS (55 years of age. He was set over the Jesuit missionary stations in Peru, and resided for many years at their chief settlement, Juli, on Lake Titicaca, from which he ultimately removed to Lima. He sailed to Mexico in 1583, and returned to Spain in 1587. His last years were spent at Valladolid and Salamanca, where he presided over Jesuit colleges, and he died at Salamanca in 1600. Acosta sets out by proving that the same sky which over-arches Europe extends all the way to America. The glorious Chrysostom had indeed maintained a contrary opinion, but Acosta had sailed as far as the tropic of Capricorn, and seen the northern constellations gradually sink as the southern cross rose. He explains the motion of the heavenly bodies by supposing that the star- sphere revolves about the immovable, spherical earth, just what his contemporary, Tycho Brahe had taught in the same year (1588). Another preliminary question which Acosta feels bound to discuss is the question how America became peopled. Since all men are descended from Adam, the first human inhabitants of the New World must have been derived from the eastern hemisphere. They could not have crossed the ocean, for they had no compass. But the tribes of men are only part of the problem ; America has its animals also, some of them large and ferocious. Saint Augustine ^ had long before pointed out that the presence of such animals in islands is a great difficulty ; he thought it possible that they might either have swum across from the mainland, or sprung out of the earth, or even have been carried across by those who took delight in hunting. Acosta rejects all these explanations ; he cannot suppose that ^ De Civitate, lib. XVI, cap. vii. E m THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS animals could swim across the Atlantic, nor would men have tried to carry fierce beasts across in ships, nor does he think it conformable to nature and the government established by God that lions, tigers and wolves should be engendered of the earth, like rats, frogs, bees and other imperfect creatures. His own solution is much more probable than any of the alternatives of Augustine, viz., that the continents of the Old and New Worlds meet or nearly so, perhaps towards the north pole, where the maps of Acosta's day showed a great widening-out of America. In another place Acosta shows that those who main- tain that the quadrupeds now peculiar to America were created there are at variance with the history of the creation and the deluge. For why should it have been necessary to preserve the animals in the ark, if they could be created anew as required, and how could the sacred history affirm that all was made and finished in six days, if other animals of high grade were still to be created ? We are bound therefore to suppose that the peculiar animals of America, such as the alpaca and the llama, came from the Old World. Perhaps all the animals dispersed gradually after the subsidence of the deluo;e, when such as found countries well suited to their mode of life survived ; the rest perished. In the end every region became populated by animals well adapted to the local conditions, and not found else- where. Every race, he goes on, not only of animals but of men, shows peculiarities which are not essential, but accidental, diflferences of colour, stature and so forth ; some apes have tails, some none ; some sheep are short- haired (bare, Acosta says), others fleecy ; some are long-necked, others short-necked. But such " acci- THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS 67 dental " differences can never, he thinks, account for the *' essential " differences between the animals of America and those of Europe. It may be doubted whether any speculator who accepted the literal truth of the book of Genesis could have framed a better explanation of the observed facts. Acosta smiles at Aristotle and other ancient philo- sophers, who had taught that the torrid zone was un- inhabitable by reason of its heat. I have lived there a long time, he said, and found it very pleasant. Only after much learned disquisition does he bring out one very material fact. Equatorial America is traversed by one of the loftiest mountain-ranges in the world, and Acosta spent most of his time in Peru at a greater elevation than the highest summits of the Pyrenees. But even the shores of equatorial America are habitable, as he shows. His discussion of the trade- winds is based upon solid facts, and his explanation is quite tolerable, though he is of course wrong in attributing them to the diurnal motion of the celestial spheres, which carry the atmo- sphere round with them. Certain plants and animals of Peru and Mexico are described briefly, especially such as are important to man. We miss some remarkable features of the flora and fauna ; there is, for example, no mention of the great cactuses, nor of the many singular water-birds of the mountain-lakes, such as Lake Titicaca ; nor of opossums, which abound, not in the mountains (most familiar to Acosta), but in the wooded plains ; the condor is dismissed in a few words. Acosta would have written a very big book if he had told all that he knew. The notices of maize, potatoes, cassava, tomatoes, bananas, cotton, and pine-apples we may pass by as long 68 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS familiar. Of cacao (our cocoa) Acosta says that it was mucli used in Mexico for the making of chocolate, which had been a favourite drink long before the arrival of the Spaniards ; it was not grown in Mexico, but imported from Central America ; cocoa-seed passed as money among the Indians. Chili peppers (Capsicum) were a favourite condiment, added to many dishes. The leaves of the Peruvian coca (Erythroxylon) were chewed as a stimulant, like the betel of equatorial Asia. The Mexican pulque, the fermented juice of the agave, is described. Prickly pears and the cochineal which is found on them, the iron-wood which sinks in water, and the brazil-wood used in dyeing are among the curiosities of which Acosta speaks. The Indians grew pulse, whether native or introduced from Europe Acosta does not know. Ginger had been already brought from the East Indies to Hispaniola, where it multiplied greatly, and the sugar-cane was extensively planted in Peru, Mexico and the West Indian Islands ; the canes were crushed by machinery. In the passion-flower people found emblems of the crucifixion ; Acosta remarks that they were not wholly wrong, but that some piety is required to believe it all. Mo7ikeys. Acosta says that he saw on the isthmus of Panama monkeys tying themselves together by their tails for the purpose of crossing a river. This story, retold by Ulloa,^ who gives an engraving of the monkey- chain, has been repeated in many popular books of natural history. Humboldt^ says that though he had opportunities of observing thousands of the howler- monkey, which is named as forming a chain, he places no confidence in such tales. 1 Viarje a la America meridional. Madrid. 1748. Vol. I, pp. 144-9. ^Personal Narrative, Eng. Trans., Vol. II, p. 264. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS 69 Puma. Of the puma or American lion Acosta says that it is not so furious as it appears in pictures. Llamas and Alpacas. These he considers to be a kind of sheep. He praises them as of great profit and small charge, for they yield both wool and meat, and carry burdens without either saddle or oats ; they are sheep and asses combined. He speaks of their being- hunted by a thousand or more hunters at a time, and also of their being lassoed with lines and plummets of lead. The vicuna he compares to a wild goat, but says elsewhere that it cannot be really a goat, for it has no horns. Manatee. This he saw in the Windward Islands, and describes it as a strange kind of fish, if we may call it a fish, for it brings forth its young alive and suckles them. The flesh was so like veal that he had scruples about eating it on a Friday. Of other quadrupeds he mentions the peccary, tapir, armadillo, chinchilla, guinea-pig and three-toed sloth, but has nothing interesting to tell about them. Humming -bii'ds. Acosta often doubted as he watched them whether they might not be bees or butterflies. Flying -Jishes. He saw flying-fishes leaping into the air to avoid the pursuit of the dorado. One fell on his ship, and he examined its wings, which he thought to resemble linen cloth or parchment. Acosta saw the guano islands, and learned that guano is a valuable fertiliser. He describes from his own experience the symptoms of mountain-sickness. It does not belong to our undertaking to quote interesting facts, of which there are many, concerning the Incas of Peru, or the ancient civilisation of Mexico. Enough has already been extracted to show how valuable 70 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS in Acosta's own day must have been the observations of a man of his wide experience, furnished too with a candid and inquiring mind. We must notice much more briefly the effects of the discoveries in tropical Asia. Here peculiarities of situation, climate, population and history rendered the new acquisitions of geographical knowledge far less important, at least for a time. In the days when there was no Suez canal the East Indies were about three times as distant from western Europe as Mexico or Peru, which is one reason for the comparative slowness of eastern exploration. In America vast tracts of land enjoy a temperate climate, and bear plants which thrive in Eurojoe, but European settlers cannot permanently establish themselves in the East Indies, and tropical plants are unable to endure the cold of our winters. The native races of America were numerically weak, little advanced in the practical arts, and unable to resist European arms ; the nations of Eastern Asia on the other hand were populous and capable of an effectual defence ; it proved to be a far harder task to explore the East than to conquer the West. Lastly, the East Indies had been long though most imperfectly known, through conquering armies, the reports of travellers, and especially through traders ; in America (especially in South America and Mexico) almost everything was new. Thus it happened that the discovery of a new world across the Atlantic immediately created a thirst for selfish acquisition, accompanied by a far weaker but nevertheless invaluable impulse to learn all that could be learned about the strange new lands. New settling grounds were opened to the Spaniards, the Portuguese, the French, and ultimately, with far greater results, to THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS 71 the Englisli. Of smaller but considerable importance was the introduction of new food-plants to Europe. On the other hand the discovery of a sea-route to India did little more at first than to throw a profitable foreign trade into the hands successively of the Portuguese, the Spaniards, the Dutch and the English. The conquest of America at once began to enlarge the bounds of natural history, but it was long before really valuable knowledge of this sort was brought from Asia. Magel- lan and his companions were able to see with their own eyes the nutmeg-tree and the clove-tree of the Moluccas, the camphor-tree of Borneo, cinnamon-trees, ginger, sago-palms and bananas. A little later Garcias ab Horto and his pupil Christobal Acosta wrote treatises on the drugs of India, but it was not till the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that the Dutch naturalists began to publish methodical treatises on the natural history of India and the Malay archipelago, while the British contributions are of still more modern date. The new food-plants brought over from America (potato, maize, Jerusalem artichoke and probably the haricot^) made a very important addition to the resources of Europe. From America too came many ornamental plants, capable of cultivation in our gardens. A few tropical species from Brazil, Peru, Chili or the West Indies, were cultivated in European greenhouses, which were however rare and costly luxuries till the eighteenth century was far advanced ; among these the passion-flower and the sensitive plant excited particular interest. But for nearly three hundred years hardly any plants from the Far East were cultivated in Europe. iThe origin of the French bean and the scarlet runner, which are both liaricots, has not been fully cleared up. See De Candolle's Cultivaitd Plants. 72 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS CLUSIUS, CONSIDERED AS A STUDENT OF EXOTIC NATURAL HISTORY Charles de L'Escluse, better known by his Latin name of Clusius (1526-1609), was a Fleming, who made it one of the occupations of his long and busy life to translate and publish the narratives of travellers and collectors in distant lands. He had studied in several universities, pursued all the principal branches of learn- ing then cultivated, and searched the wilder parts of western and central Europe for rare plants. He had lived at Montpellier in the house of the eminent naturalist Rondelet, and had been encouraged by him to devote himself to botany and zoology, had directed the imperial botanic garden in Vienna, and had been the intimate associate of L'Obel and Dodoens, besides keeping up a correspondence with Busbecq, Gesner and many other men of note. During the latter half of his life he was the o-reat centre of botanical information. Serious troubles, arising partly from his Protestant faith, and partly from an extraordinary proneness to fracture and dislocation of the limbs, did not spoil his power of work. His last years were spent in a quiet professorship at Leyden. lAe y^*-^ f/'^ /^^f^^* ^^ t^ /^7t The two books cited ^ contain the most important results of the labours of Clusius. Here we can read the accounts which early Spanish or Portuguese travellers and residents in the East or West Indies had given of the fruit-eating bat, three-banded and six-banded arma- dillos, the sloth and pangolin, the sperm-whale, the manatee, the cassowary, dodo and penguin, humming- ^ Rariorum Plantamm Historia. Fol. Antwerp. 1601. Exoticorum lihri decern, quibiis animalium, 2)l<-mtanim, aromatum, aliorumque peregrincmim fructuum hislorice describuntur : item Petri Bellonii observationes, eodem Car. Clusii interprete. Fol. Antwerp. 1605. ^ / CLUSIUS 73 birds and birds of Paradise, the chimaera, diodon, tetrodon and ostracion, the king-crab and gorgonia, the banyan, mace, nutmeg, spice-clove, cinnamon, pepper, lac, the Egyptian lotus (Nelumbium), the coco- nut, pine-apple, vanilla, arnotto, capsicum, copal and tobacco, besides foreign drugs, such as aloes, assafetida, sarsaparilla, balsam of tolu, castor-oil and opium. His descriptions are often accompanied by woodcuts, which give a fair notion of the objects. The diligence of Clusius was often rewarded by un- expected and highly curious facts. In his last years especially, residence in Holland, then beginning to send out ships to the Far East, gave him excellent oppor- tunities of collecting information, but he had been long before known throughout Europe as a man learned in every branch of natural history. A Portuguese physician, Christobal Acosta, who had resided at Goa, published a description of the sensitive plant, which Clusius trans- lated, adding a figure taken from a dried specimen brought by the Earl of Cumberland from the island " D. Joannis a portu nuncupata." ^ Another time he was disappointed by the death at sea of a live sloth, shipped to Amsterdam, but managed to draw or procure a drawing of the carcase ; which he helped out by the description of Oviedo ; it is not surprising that his figure is hardly recognisable. For the sperm-whale he had to trust to a figure given by a Spanish friar (in a catechism !) and to a drawing of a specimen cast up on the Dutch coast.- A squadron of eight ships, com- manded bv Van Neck, sailed from Holland to the East ^ This island was Cuba, named bj' Columbus after the son of Ferdinand and Isabella, the infante Juan. 2 The same whale, apparentlj-, reappears in Visscher's Piscium Virce Icones (1634) and in Jonston (De Piscihm et Cetis, 1650, pi. XLII), but the point of view differs a little from that of Clusius' figure. 74 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS Indies in 1598, conquered the Mauritius from the Portuguese, and renamed it after their own Prince Maurice. The narrative of the voyage, published in 1601, makes mention for the first time of the dodo, of which a live specimen was brought home. Clusius was able to copy a sketch made on board, and also to describe a dodo's foot preserved at Leyden. An apothecary of Leyden possessed the skin of a pangolin, which Clusius figures under the name of " Lacertus peregrinus spinosus." Though he calls it a lizard, he mentions that some hairs were found on the body ; it was not yet known that a few scattered hairs are the infallible mark of a mammal. In the posthumous CurcB posteriores (1611) he tells how Johannes van Ufele, a traveller in Brazil, showed him a book of pictures of Brazilian animals and plants, coloured after nature, and copied for him the drawings of the male and female papaw, which are reproduced as woodcuts. Clusius helped to spread the potato-plant in Flanders, Austria and Germany ; the question of the first intro- duction of the plant into Europe, about which much has been written, is too complicated for discussion in this place. ^ In co-operation with Busbecq and others, he made the horse-chestnut, the lilac, the mock-orange, the tulip and the common laurel, then called " the plum of Trebizond," known to the gardeners of Europe. The scientific gain which accrued from the multitude of new species was not really so great as it appeared to be. So vast and sudden an accession of facts overpowered rather than strengthened the infant studies of zoologists and botanists. Until the Systema Natures of Linnaeus 1 The facts are recited by Dr. Daj'don Jackson in the Gardener's Chronicle, Mar. 17 and 24, 1900. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS 75 appeared naturalists had not even pigeon-holes ready to receive the new species. Ray, in the generation next before Linnaeus, found it impossible to arrange the new fishes and plants which poured in from America alone. Even the subject of geographical distribution, though more manageable than most branches of biological inquiry, could not be investigated to real profit. Europe was as ill-prepared to grasp the new opportunities of enlarging the knowledge of terrestrial life as politically and morally ill-prepared to use her conquests in Mexico and Peru to the lasting advantage of mankind. The naturalists of Europe were untrained, and training was hardly to be had. Here and there a man like Swam- merdam might show how fruitful is the close study of a few well-chosen animals and plants, but the lesson was little heeded. Collectors went on loading their cabinets and folios with ill-described and ill-understood objects, seldom attempting close comparisons of distinct forms, or investigating internal structure, or framing instructive generalisations. It was not till the age of Bufi'on that comprehensive and daring questions were raised in earnest, and that the new sciences of geology and palae- ontology began to enforce the pregnant thought that facts unintelligible on the theory of sudden creation might receive an explanation from long-continued development. A new race of travellers (Pallas, Hum- boldt, Robert Brown and Darwin) appeared, who cared less about making collections than about the acquisition of new ideas and the solution of problems. Even then it was only the few who could restrain the passion for mere acquisition. The infinite wealth of natural facts is to this day an impediment to all naturalists except the few who are content to remain ignorant of many things in order that they may learn what is best worth knowing. SECTION III. SOME EARLY ENGLISH NATUR- ALISTS AND A CONTEMPORARY FRENCH AGRICULTURIST WILLIAM TURNER 1510?-1568 Libellus de re herbaria novus. 4to. Lond. 1538. Reprinted in facsimile, with notes and life, by B. Daydon Jackson, 1877. Avium praicipuanim, quarum apud Plinium et Aristotelem mentio est, brevis et succinota historia. 8vo. Coloniaj, 1544. English translation by A. H. Evans. 8vo. Camb. 1903. A New Herball, etc., Fol. Lond. 1551. The second part. Fol. Collen (Cologne). 1562. The third part. Fol. Lond. 1568. Englishmen took no part in the revival of botany and zoology, any more than in the invention of printing, engraving and other useful arts, but were during many years content to imitate as well as they could the example of more advanced countries. Such backward- ness might be attributed to intellectual apathy, were it not for the great things accomplished by Englishmen in the same age. The maintenance of the first place among the Protestant powers, the establishment of a maritime strength able to contend with Spain in all seas, and the glorious Elizabethan literature sufficiently attest the vigour of our forefathers during that memor- able time. At last Englishmen began, one by one, to study the natural productions of their own country. It was lono- TURNER 77 before any of them achieved eminence ; John Ray, in the latter half of the seventeenth century, was the first who could be compared with the best naturalists of Flanders, Germany and Switzerland. Turner was a fellow of a Cambridge college, who had, under the influence of Ridley and Latimer, become a stout Protestant. While still at the university he studied botany, and put forth his Lihellus, which gives the Greek, Latin and English names of all the plants which he knew. " As yet," he explains, " ther was no Englishe herbal but one, al full of unlearned cacographies and falselye naming of herbes" (the Great Herbal). He was soon afterwards imprisoned for preaching without a licence. When set free he went abroad, studied botany and medicine under Luke Ghini at Bologna, visited Gesner at Zurich, and botanised along the Rhine. On the accession of our Edward VL he returned to England, and found employment as chap- lain, physician and botanist. He was made dean of Wells in 1550, but was forced to flee again to the con- tinent on Mary's accession. At her death he recovered his deanery, but fell into trouble again in 1564, being suspended for nonconformity in the use of vestments. He died in London in 1568. Turner's literary activity was chiefly exhibited in religious controversy. His Herhall, though now inter- esting to the student of the English language, did nothing for scientific botany. The arrangement is alphabetical, under the Latin or Greek names, much space is devoted to the virtues and properties of the plants, and more than three-quarters of the figures are borrowed from Fuchs. Turner's best work in natural history was his history of birds. The primary object of this book was the determination of the birds named by 78 SOME EARLY ENGLISH NATURALISTS Aristotle and Pliny, but its whole value lies in the observations made in England. "It is not too much to say" (we quote from Mr. Evans) "that almost every page bears witness to a personal knowledge of the subject, which would be distinctly creditable even to a modern ornithologist." The following passages, quoted from Mr. Evans' translation, show Turner at his best : — " There is a certain bird which Englishmen call Creeper, that is Climber, for it always climbs about on trees : this I believe to be the Certhia. It is a little bigger than the Regulus, having a whitish breast, the other parts dull brown, but varied with black spots ; its note is sharp, its beak is slender and is slightly hooked towards the tip ; it never rests, but is for ever climbing up the trunks of trees after the manner of the Wood- peckers, and it eats grubs, picking them from the bark." " I know two sorts of Kites, the greater and the less ; the greater is in colour nearly rufous, and in England is abundant and remarkably rapacious. This kind is wont to snatch food out of children's hands, in our cities and towns. The other kind is smaller, blacker, and more rarely haunts cities. This I do not remember to have seen in England, though in Germany most frequently." JOHN GERARD 1545-1612 Herball, or Generall History of Plaiites. Fol. Lend. 1597. The memory of Gerard, the English botanist of the period who is most read and quoted, is tarnished by unscrupulous borrowing. His Herhall was re-edited by Thomas Johnson, a London apothecary, who greatly extended and improved it, insomuch that Ray called GERARD 79 this edition (Fol. Lond. 1633) " Gerardus emaculatus," i.e. cleansed from blots. Johnson admits that Gerard was incompetent, and that his herbal was an elaborate plagiarism; the story has often been told in detail.^ Gerard is useful to the botanist and gardener, because he tells us what plants were cultivated in English gardens at the time when he wrote. In turning over such books as Alton's Hortus Kewensis, which give the countries from which our garden exotics come, and the year of first introduction, we continually meet with the date 1597, which means that our first knowledge of the plant as an English garden-flower is drawn from Gerard. JOHN CAIUS 1510-1573 De Canibus Britannicis. 8vo. Lond. 1570. An English translation (" Of Englishe Dogges") was made by Abraham Fleming, student (4to. Lond. 1576). This account of the Dogs of Britain, together with chapters on rare animals and plants, on Caius' own books, and on the pronunciation of Greek and Latin, form a small book, of which the dogs occupy only twenty-six pages and a table of breeds. John Caius (the name is supposed to be a Latinised form of Kay) is now best known as the second founder of a Cambridge college. In his lifetime he was renowned as a physician, who served in succession Edward the Sixth, Mary and Elizabeth, and wrote w4iat is con- sidered the best contemporary account of the sweating sickness.^ ^Dr. Daydon Jackson saj's [Dirt. Nat. Bioq.) that nearly all Gerard's figures are taken from the Eicones of Tabernaemontanus ; only sixteen are original. -A Boke or Counseill against the Disease commonly called the Sweats or Sweating Sickness. 8vo. Lond. 1552. 80 SOME EARLY ENGLISH NATURALISTS It is of interest to note that after completing his Cambridge course he had studied anatomy at Padua under Vesalius. The treatise on the Doo;s of Britain was written for Conrad Gesner, who would have printed it at once, had not Caius demanded time for revision. Meanwhile Gesner died, and in the end Caius printed his little book independently. He gives a slight and amusing account of the dogs known in the time of Queen Elizabeth, supplying such information as a country gentleman fond of field-sports might pour out in the course of conversation. The table of British dogs is here quoted in a simplified form : — First come the Generosi, or well-bred dogs : — Vexatici (hunting dogs) Terrare (terrier). Harier (harrier). Bhidhunde (bloodhound). Gasehunde (greyhound). Leviner or lyemmer. Tumbler. AUCUPATORII (fowling dogs) Spainel (spaniel). Setter. Water-spainel or fynder. Delicati (pet dogs) Spainel-gentle or comforter. The lower-class dogs follow : — EusTici (farm dogs) Shepherdes dogge (sheep-dog). Mastive or bandedogge. Degeneres (mongrels) Wappe. Turnspete. Danser. The following names of dogs occur in the text, but not in the table : — otter-hound, lurcher, brach ; the bull-dog, beagle, pointer and retriever are not mentioned in either. CAIUS 81 The bloodhound was in Caius' day regularly employed in tracking cattle-lifters. Hector Boece (1527) says : — " the samin ar richt frequent and rife on the bordouris of Ingland and Scotland." The gasehound or gazehound has been supposed to be an old English greyhound/ which has perhaps dis- appeared by the steady selection of improved varieties. Caius tells us that it sought its prey by sight, not by scent, that it was more used in the northern than in the southern counties, and more in open country than in woodlands ; lastly, that it was more often followed on horseback than on foot. The lyemmer, limer, or lime-hound (Fr. limier) was a dog led in a lyara, or leash. The tumbler, according to Caius, was known by its trick of turning suddenly and seizing its prey in the mouth of the burrow. He speaks of its artfulness in giving no warning. The tumbler was smaller and slenderer than the harrier, and had more erect ears. Paulinus (Cynographia curiosa, 1685) and Riedel (Tabula generalis, 1780-4) identify the tumbler with the dachshund. Of the water-spaniel Caius says that it had long, curly hair, and was used to recover birds hit with the cross- bow,^ or darts which had missed their mark. The water- spaniel was known to Bewick, who gives a figure of it, but has now been completely replaced by the retriever. (See below.) The spaniel-gentle or comforter was distinguished from the Maltese dog, which was very small. Sully used to tell how he found the effeminate Valois, Henri HI., ^ Caius' Latin name for the gazehound, Vertragus or Vertayua, survives in the modern French vautre, a boar-hound. - The Latin word is scorpio, which Fleming mistranslated venomous woim, a blunder which has been repeated in some recent books. F 82 SOME EARLY ENGLISH NATURALISTS with his sword by his side, a cape about his shoulders, a little flat cap on his head, and a basket hanging from his neck, in which were two or three dogs no bigger than your fist. The comforter is mentioned in Bewick's Quadru]jeds. The name of bandog for the mastiff implies that it was often tied up. Caius calls it "villaticus seu cate- narius." The mastiff was used to guard flocks, to hunt the wild boar, to keep swine from straying, to bait bulls, and to draw water from wells ; it was also made into a beast of burden, or chained up as a watch-dog. The loyalty of mastifts is praised, and we are expected to believe that they were so intelligent as to gather the embers together with their paws, so as to keep the fire from going out, or to heap ashes over them when the flame was too fierce. Bewick's bandog was a small mastiff. Caius' mongrels were dogs of no particular breed, which had been taught to bark at strangers, to turn spits, or to dance to a tune. Wajjpe or wap2')et is the name of a mongrel kept for giving warning by its bark. Caius derives iva2:>p>e from wau (our bow-wow?). The turnspit had a long body and crooked legs, but these peculiarities are found in dogs of more than one breed. Bewick (1790) still retains the turnspit among the British dogs, but says that its services were little valued. We shall notice next the omissions from Caius' table, passing over the otter-hound, which, though not included in the table, is mentioned in the text as a dog that pursues the otter. The lurcher ( " canis furax " of Caius) was, he says, a dog that hunted rabbits by scent and did not bark ; it CAIUS 83 was used by night, probably by poachers. Youatt says that the original lurcher was a cross between the grey- hound and the sheep-dog. The brack has been defined as a deerhound (Nares' Glossary) or any dog that hunts by scent ; according to Caius, brach w^as not the name of a breed, but of a hunting bitch. The four dogs which follow are neither named nor described in TJie Dogs of Britain. There is no hint of a bull-dog, and in Caius' day bulls were baited by mastiffs. The poet Gay, who had written on rural sports, speaks in his Fables (1726), not of the bull and the bull-dog, but of the bull and the mastiff.^ The pointer is believed to have been unknown in England until 1688 ; no such dog is mentioned by Caius. Darwin ^ says that the English pointer changed greatly during the hundred years before 1859, chiefly in consequence of crosses with the fox-hound. The beagle was perhaps reckoned by Caius as a harrier. The retriever is believed to be a cross-breed, first produced in the nineteenth century. The name how- ever is old. Juliana Bernes (Booh of St. Albans, 1486) says : — " if ye have a chastysed spanyell that wyl be rebuked and is a ret7'iever," &c. Caius has not a word to say about the origin of the breeds of dogs. When such questions were raised, in the eighteenth century, the breeds were supposed to be either independent species, or hybrids. ^Quoted from The Fai-rier (1828) by Darwin, Animals and Plants under Do7nestication. R. B. Lee says in Modern Dogs that the bull-dog is first mentioned in 1631, when Prestwich Eaton wrote from St. Sebastian to London for a mastiff and two good bull-dogs. 2 Origin of Species, chap. i. 84 SOME EAELY ENGLISH NATURALISTS The weapons mentioned by Caius as used in hunting are the cross-bow, the javelin and the arrow. ^ The net was used in fowling in this way. The setter, when he found the game (partridges or quails), crouched and lay down, showing the direction of the birds with his foot;^ then it was the business of the fowler to draw his net over them. This done, the setter roused the birds, which got entangled in the net. Ferrets were used to drive rabbits from their burrows. We find a few dosj-stories taken from books, Caius quotes from Froissart the story of a greyhound belonging to Richard II., which greeted the Duke of Lancaster and thereby gave a forecast of his master's fate ; he tells also how Henry VII. ordered the mastiffs to be hanged which had dared to attack the lion, the king of beasts. THOMAS MOUFET 1553-1604 Insectorum sive minimorum animalium Theatrum : olim ab Edoardo Wot- tono, Conrado Gesnero, Thomaque Pennio inchoatum : tandem Tho. Moufeti Londinatis opera sumptibusque maximis concinnatum, auctum, perfectum, &c. Fol. Lond. 1634. Moufet ^ was the son of a Scotch tradesman settled in London. He studied medicine under Caius at Cam- ^ Fifty years later (1621) Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy shows that bows, arrows and javelins had then disappeared, the gun taking their place. "Fowling is more troublesome, but all out as delightsome to some sorts of men, be it with guns, lime, nets, glades, gins, strings, baits, pitfalls, pipes, calls, stalking-horses, setting-dogs, coy-ducks, &c. or otherwise." Pt. II, sect, ii, memb. 4, " "Pedis indicio locum stationis avium prodit : unde canem indicem [pointer] vocare placuit." Willughby's Ornithology, where the training of a setter is described, after Markham and others, makes no mention of pointing with the foot, but says that when the dog " standeth still and waveth his tail, looking forward as if he pointed at somewhat, be sure the Partridge is before him." 2 The name is variously spelt, and is no doubt the same as Moffat. MOUFET 85 bridge, and afterwards abroad. He practised in Ipswich and in London, and was patronised by the Earl of Pembroke, who made him member of parliament for Wilton in 1597. Gesner, who was overpowered by the impossible task of describing animals and plants of every kind, had obtained the assistance of Thomas Penny, who laboured to complete a sketch of a History of Insects made by Wotton. At Penny's death, his notes, untidy and full of erasures, were handed over to Moufet, who in turn died before the work was published. Moufet's manuscript lay long in the possession of Sir Theodore Mayerne, who at last produced in 1634 the belated treatise. Mayerne was a French protestant, who had been physician to Henry IV., king of France. He had incurred the hatred of the Galenists by using chemical drugs, among others calomel. These troubles probably drove him to England, where he became physician to James I. and afterwards to Charles I. Though Wotton, Gesner, Penny and Mayerne all contributed to the book, it possesses little value. The structure, life-histories and classification of insects are handled without real knowledge, and the authors trusted mainly to what they could find in the books of the learned. The coarse woodcuts are mostly unnamed. Martin Lister^ in a letter to Ray, criticises the con- fused arrangement of Moufet's matter, and still more severely his transference of information from Aldrovandi, who is not once named. Those who care to occupy themselves with Moufet's literary gifts will find a favourable specimen in the thirteenth chapter of the second book, where he dis- courses upon the virtues of spiders. Of his inability to distinguish between a true and a false narrative one 1 Correspondence of John Ray, 1848, p. 12. 86 SOME EARLY ENGLISH NATURALISTS proof will suffice. He relates that on Feb. 24th, 1574, so great a multitude of cockchafers fell into the Severn that the water-wheels were choked. The mills would have been blocked to this day (etiamnum hodie), but for the exertions of men, aided by fowls, ducks, nightjars, sparrowhawks and bats. A curious word or phrase, and at long intervals a fact which is both credible and worth preserving, ill repay the reader's exertions. We find (Chap. I.) been, the old plural of bee. Trying to prove that insects need not be contemptible merely because they are small, Moufet has recourse to the singular argument that Drake, though a little man, was more than a match for the biggest of the Spaniards.^ It would be hard to mention any more valuable information which the book yields to a modern naturalist than the statement that a Spanish galleon captured by Drake was overrun with cockroaches.^ Mayerne's dedication is livelier reading than Moufet's text. He dwells upon the wonders of the insect-world with considerable animation. No doubt his disposition was trustful, for he accepts such statements as that the cicadas are fed on dew, and that the scarab rolls its pellet of dung for a whole lunar month, following the course of the sun all the time. There are better things than these, however, in the dedication. Mayerne ex- plains, quite truly, that the green grasshopper chirps by rubbing its wing-covers together, and that its stomach is armed with teeth. We find an interesting mention of glass lenses, which had already been used to demonstrate structural peculiarities of the flea, the movements of the heart and blood in the louse, and the head and feet of the itch-insect. An English translation of the TJieatrum is given as 1 Preface. 2 P. 138. BUTLER 87 an appendix to Topsell's History of Four-footed Beasts and Serpents (folio. Lond. 1658). Topsell's History is an adaptation of Gesner for English readers CHAELES BUTLEE Z;^;? ?_1647 The Feminine Monarchie ; or a treatise concerning Bees and the due ordering of them. 8vo. Oxford. 1609. »^^ The Feminine Monarchy, or the History of Bees, written out of experience, &c. Third edition. Sra. 4to. Oxford. 1634. ^^^ The first account of the economy of the bee-hive which we shall have to notice is Butler's Feminine Monarchy, a learned, practical and amusing treatise. Thomas Hill's Prof table Art of Gardening {Ath ed. Lond. 8vo. 1568) contains a chapter on the ordering of bees, but Hill explains in his preface that he had no practical know- ledge of bees ; he merely collected statements and opinions from ancient authors.^ Butler was parson of Laurence Wotton, near Basing- stoke, and master of Basingstoke grammar-school. He wrote other books besides the Feminine Monarchy, a treatise on rhetoric, a treatise on consanguinity in marriage, an English grammar with a new phonetic spelling, and a book on the principles of spelling. The Feminine Monarchy seems to have achieved success ; it reached a third edition, and a Latin translation was published in 1673. I have quoted from the third edition, which adopts the phonetic spelling advocated ^ Butler explains in his preface that Georgius Pictorius had collected passages about bees from ancient authors, and that one T.H. (Thomas Hill) of London had translated these into English, concealing the author's name. "These and the like, when a scholar hath thoroughly read, he thinketh himself thoroughly instructed in these mysteries, but when he cometh abroad to put his learning in practice, every silly woman is ready to deride his learned ignorance." 88 SOME EARLY ENGLISH NATURALISTS in the author's English Grammar. Some readers will value this edition all the more because it contains complimentary verses by George Wither. One sentence in the book shows Butler's politics : " The bees abhor as well Polyarchy as Anarchy, God having shewed in them unto men the most natural and absolute form of GOVERNMENT." ^ Butler looks up to Aristotle as the chief authority on natural history, though he does not hesitate to correct even Aristotle when there is cause. Aristotle, while admittino; that the case was not clear, had called the supposed governor of the hive the king-hee ; Butler insists that in this community the males bear no sway at all ; it is an Amazonian or feminine monarchy. He does not realise that the queen is under normal con- ditions the mother of the entire family. Of the drones he says that they are found in the hive during the whole breeding season and then only ; they are bred and reared by the workers. Wasps and "dors" (humble-bees) have their drones, as well as hive-bees. The workers, which he calls the " honey-bees," lay all the eggs from which drones or workers are hatched.^ In summer only " they suffer their drones among them for a season, by whose masculine virtue they strangely conceive and breed for the preservation of their sweet kind." Proof that the drones are males was of course unattainable as yet. No anatomical investigation of the different inmates of the hive had been made, and 1 Jerome Cortes [Lihro y Tratado de los Animahs, 8vo. Valencia, 1613, p. 452) practised the same flattery before Butler, as did Joseph Warder (The True Amazons, or the Monarchy of Bees, 12mo. Lond. 1712) after him. ^Moufet, who died in 1599, had also maintained that the small bees are females, and the drones males (Theatrum, p. 13). BUTLER 89 nearly two hundred years had still to run before the mating of the queen with the drone became a demon- strated fact. Butler admits (p. 55) that the drones had not been seen to engender with the workers.^ The queen, he says, is " perhaps of no kindred with the drones or workers." He seems to have imagined that the offspring of the queen are all queens,^ but here he leaves much unexplained. Having remarked that the cells are of different sizes, and that they are completed before any eggs are laid in them, he infers that the prolific female (not the queen, but the worker, according to his view) enjoys a peculiar gift ; she knows whether she is about to lay male or female eggs, and chooses the cells accordingly. Butler thinks that the queen is assisted by " subor- dinate governors and leaders," which are distinguished by a crest, tuft, tassel, or plume, of yellow or murrey colour, turned up in some, down in others. Pollen- grains, clinging in strings to the heads of bees, as they often do, no doubt gave rise to this fancy. There is a hint of some belief of the same sort in Aristotle, A tolerable account of the structure of the hive-bee is given. The compound eyes are recognised as organs of sight, and the "fangs" (mandibles) and "tongue" (proboscis) are briefly described. The "horns" (antennae) are said to be used for feeling. We are told that no brain is to be found in the head ! The sight of bees, he thinks, is poor, their sense of smell excellent ; hearing, feeling and taste they no doubt enjoy. Stinging, he says, is present death to the bee which inflicts the wound — rather too strong a statement of the case. 1 For Milton's theory of the bee-conimunity, which may have been founded on Butler, sec infra, p. 18G. ^ Yet he says : — " if the old queen bring forth many princes (as she may have six or seven, yea sometimes half a score or more, &c.)." P. 4. 90 SOME EARLY ENGLISH NATURALISTS Among the implements which he recommends to the bee-master is a drone-pot, that is, a weel made of wire, and used like a lobster-pot. The drone-pot is set at the door of the hive, and is so constructed that the drones can enter it, but cannot leave it again. In this way drones can be caught and killed, whenever it is necessary to prevent waste of the store of honey. ^ Butler, being master of the art of music, as of many other arts, attempts to set down the song of the bees when busy in their hive. He tells us that he pricked down the bees' music wdth the help of a wind-instrument, but confesses that his dull hearing could not perfectly analyse the confused noise of the buzzing bees, and that he was obliged to make out the conclusion as best he could. He assigns the treble part to the princesses, the bass to the queen, and tries to show how the inner parts are supplied. The glee in four parts and triple time, which he prints as the Bees' Song, must not, of course, be taken for a real transcription of the sounds of the hive ; it would be as reasonable to believe that the bees composed the verses to which the song is set. In the engraved music the bass and counter-tenor parts are printed upside-down, so that four singers, each holding his own corner of the book, may sing away together. Bees may be seen, says Butler, to blow liquid wax from their mouths. Sometimes they do it in such a hurry as to drop the wax in the form of loose white scales on the stool or the "skirts" of the hive; these scales, when warmed, can be kneaded into pellets. Butler was on the way to discover how wax is secreted, but was too impatient to work the matter out properly. The hexagonal cells (Butler does not call them hexa- gonal, but six-square, a convenient English word, which iPp. 47,66. BUTLER 91 we have unwisely dropped)^ are thought to be due to the fact that bees have six feet. He notes some of the advantages of the six-sided prism, though not its strength nor its economy. He describes the pyramidal ends, and the way in which every cell adjoins three cells of the opposed layer. Bee-bread, such as the workers bring home on their hind feet, was then popularly believed to be some kind of wax ; Butler, however, calls it '' gross honey," or "gross leg-honey," and explains that it has a sweet taste, while it does not melt with heat.^ Nothing was then known of the use of bee-bread in feeding the larvae. Liquid honey, he rightly explains, the bees collect with their tongues, and " let it down into their bottels." Virgil (who in this follows Aristotle) misleads Butler on one point, making him say that the purest nectar comes from above {" aera mellis caelestia dona "). This aerial honey is of course honey-dew, concerning which naturalists knew nothing accurately until Reaumur enlightened them. When he comes to treat of the collecting habits of bees, Butler furnishes some details wdiich show close observation : — "They gather," he says, "on the flowers of the maple a whole month together, and somewhat on the flower of vetch, when his time is, but the greatest store of honey is drawn out of the black spot of the little picked (piked, or pointed) leaf (stipule) of the vetch, which groweth on each side of the two or three upper- most joints. These they ply continually : I never saw vetches, how far soever from hives, that for three months together (if the weather served) were not full of bees. ^ The same visage lasted through the eighteenth century. Wesley's Jomiial makes mention of rooms or buildings which were thret-square, tight-square and tivdve-sq^iare. 2 P. 106. 92 SOME EARLY ENGLISH NATURALISTS Beans also, wliich with their flowers have also black- spotted leaves as well as the vetches, on which sometimes they gather," ^ "The bees o-ather but one kind of flower in one o voyage." "And in this great variety this is strange that where they begin they will make an end, and not meddle with any flower of other sort until they have their load." Here he quotes Aristotle {Hist. Anim. IX, 27). " Inso- much that those which begin with the flower of the vetch will not once touch the rich spotted leaf of the same before they have been at home. Although when they come to a flower that yieldeth both nectar and ambrosia, they will use sometimes the tongue and some- times the fangs, and gather them both."" These observations, which were confirmed by Ray,* appear to be the first mention of extra-floral nectaries. The making of mead and metheglin is carefully described. In Butler's day no yeast was deliberately added, though the diluted honey was often drawn into a beer-barrel. He notes the formation of a "mother" (impure pellicle of fermentative micro-organisms) on the liquor and the proneness of the mead to pass into vinegar. Mead is still made on the old plan in secluded parts of England. Not long ago, in the dense beech- woods of Buckinghamshire, and only thirty miles from Cornhill as the crow flies, I saw a man and his wife making mead just as Butler used to make it. Butler thinks honey much better than sugar, and tells how to make with honey, marmalade of quinces, marchpane, and other sweetmeats which bear delicious names. iPp. 109-10. 2 p. 112. '^Cat. Plantarum circa Cantahrigiam nascentium, pp. 175-6 (1660). BUTLER 93 . It will be seen that the reader who spends a day or two upon the Feminine Monarchy may expect other pleasures than those of natural history. We now and then come across forgotten English phrases and words, e.g. "it is also convenient for each hive to have his settle before him ; " ^ the bees are said to return to the hive leere,'^ &c. Butler's lively expression often charms the reader, as in the following passage : — " There re- maineth yet another enemy worse than all these ; for these all do wrong the bees but by little and little, some in their goods, some in their persons, and there is remedy shewed, if industry be not wanting, against them all. But this," he means the stealer of hives, " when he cometh, playeth sweepstake with them, carrying away both honey and wax and bees and hive, &c." ^ OLIVIER DE SERRES 1539-1619 Le Theatre d'Agriculture et Mesnage des Champs, d'Olivier de Serres, seigneur du Pradel . . . Nouvelle edition . . . publiee par la Soci^t^ d'Agriculture du Departement de la Seine. 2 vols. 8vo., Paris, Ans XII-XIV [1804-5]. Though the name of De Serres is rare in English books,* he is still fondly remembered by Frenchmen. His chief title to fame is that he did so much to spread the silk-industry in France, but he is also honoured as the author of the Thedtre d' Agriculture, which gives a lively picture of country life in Languedoc during the latter half of the sixteenth century. ^ So too in the English Grammer we have the verb and " Ma cases " ; but its also occurs. "^ Leer (empty) is still used by the peasants of Devonshire. 3 P. 137. * Arthur Young {Travels in France) speaks of him with enthusiasm. 94 A CONTEMPORARY FRENCH AGRICULTURIST De Serres was prominent among the Protestants of the Vivarais (the modern Ardeche). The Thedtre shows that besides being a seigneur who tilled his own lands, he was a wide reader and a practised writer. Faujas de Saint-Fond/ writing in 1802, describes the large and beautiful meadow which gave the name of Le Pradel to Olivier de Serres' estate, a league distant from Villeneuve-de-Berg. It sloped gently from the chateau, was watered by a spring issuing from its upper end, and fringed by a triple row of fine oaks. In the background rose a volcanic mountain, crowned with basaltic columns. The chateau had been thrice fired durina; the wars of religion, and only one of its towers was standing in 1802. All the trees which De Serres had planted had been cut down, and little remained of his improve- ments except the fragments of an aqueduct made for watering his gardens and turning his mills. The house still stands, though much altered. The Thedti^e opens with a discussion on soils. Some of the indications of fertility are taken from the Georgics. De Serres prefers a mixture of plain, hillside and mountain, and praises as " bon et beau " a site which not a little resembles his own domain of Le Pradel. De Serres is far from vulgar superstition ; if he collects old saws about lucky and unlucky days, it is only to laugh at them. Nevertheless he does not reject the prevalent opinion that the heavenly bodies exert an influence upon the affairs of men. The moon especially, as the nearest of them, may, he thinks, affect the weather and the growth of plants and animals. The 1 An early geologist of great mark (174:1-1819), who described the traohj'tie mass of the M^zenc ( Recherches sur les volcans dteints du Vivarais et du Vtlay, 1778), the basalt of Fingal's cave, &o. OLIVIER DE SERRES 95 tides ebb and flow under the influence of tlie moon ; plants turn towards the sun and are fostered by his rays. Accordingly he would not set at naught the belief that timber-trees must only be felled when the moon is waning, lest he should thereby endanger the safety of his buildings. But he thinks it foolish to wait for a change of the moon when the weather is favourable to the operations of the farm. Diligence to seize opportunity by the forelock is better than ail forecasts. " Que I'homme estant par trop kinier De fruicts ne remplit son panier." Science, experience and diligence is the motto of the Theatre, science meaning knowledge, and especially book-knowledge. De Serres is careful to show that while book-learning may be futile, experience may be unenlightened, and he trusts neither alone. Hence, while he enforces Virgil's advice : — " Laudato ingentia rura, exigua colite," or quotes Hesiod upon the difl'erence between the neighbour who rushes barefoot to help a friend in trouble and the neighbour who waits till he has finished dressing, he does not disdain to offer bits of practical advice in homely rhymes, e.g. " Celui son bien ruinera Qui par autrui le manira ; " or this, " On dit bien vray, qu'en chacune saison La femme fait ou defait la maison." There is set before the reader a pleasing mixture of history, literature and practical good sense. Obsolete phrases often give a rustic flavour to the book, as here : — " Plus rare present ne pourriez-vous f^xire a vos amis que de fruits exquis : voire les plus grands seigneurs ont accoustume de recevoir humainement le plein panier d abricots bien choisis, et la douzaine de poires ou prunes 96 A CONTEMPORARY FRENCH AGRICULTURIST de remarque que rhomme vertueux leur oifre, tant petit soit-il." The chapter on silk-culture begins with the ancients, telling how Virgil believed that silk grew on trees, how Pliny, though he knew that silk was spun by insects, supposed that the insects were generated from fallen flowers,^ how under the emperor Aurelian silk was w^orth its weight in gold, how two monks brought silkworm eggs from Cathay to Byzantium in the reign of Justinian,^ and how from this time silk-culture gradually spread through the Mediterranean countries. De Serres traces the introduction of the silkworm and the mulberry-tree into France to the return of Charles VIII from Italy (1494).3 By 1600 the industry was well-established in Provence, Languedoc and some of the neighbouring provinces, and had been attempted in Touraine, the Orleannais and Normandy. In 1554 an edict had been put forth to encourage the planting of mulberries. De Serres himself had reared silkworms and collected their cocoons for thirty-five years when he began to write about them. In 1599 Henri Quatre, having remarked that imported silk and silk-stuffs cost the French people " plus de quatre milions d'or " every year, became eager to spread silk-culture in his own dominions. De Serres w^as invited to report on the subject, and having his Thedtre ready for the press (it was published in the following year) he extracted from it one chapter, which was printed as a little 8vo pamphlet of about a hundred pages, called La Cuillete de la Soye. A little later, in 1605, Laffemas, ' De Serres says leaves. '^It was only then, that is, in the sixth century a.d. that Europeans came to know that silk is spun by caterpillars which feed on the mulberry-tree. ^ Earlier dates are also quoted. The first pope who resided at Avignon, Clement V, is said to have introduced them in 1305. OLIVIER DE SERRES 97 the minister of Commerce, aided the same cause by writing a manual of mulberry-planting and silkworm- feeding for the use of the clergy. Good advice was not the only means employed, for the king prohibited the importation of silk-fabrics, and ordered the white mulberry to be planted in all his gardens. From fifteen to twenty thousand were sent to the Tuileries, where a large house was built and fitted up for the rearino; of silkworms. Sully opposed the extension of silk- culture in France, on the ground that it would encourage luxury ; his objections were not heeded. Colbert, who found time for every enterprise that concerned the interests of France, attended to the improvement of the silk- industry, , and it gradually rose to great importance. In 1780 the value of the annual yield of cocoons was estimated at near a million sterling, and by 1848 the figure had risen to four millions. De Serres calls silk a miracle of nature, and the silk- worm " animal admirable," lacking as it does flesh, blood, bones, intestines, eyes, ears and other things which are found in nearly all animals. He has a good general notion of the life-history. The abstinence from food of the pupa strikes him as surprising. He enters into many practical details concerning the propagation and management both of the mulberry and of the silkworm. The maladies to which the larva is subject are carefully, though not instructively, described. Superstitious or fanciful usages, such as dipping the eggs into choice wine, hatching them in the bosom of a woman, and sipping wine before handling the larvae, are mentioned, some- times with approval ; the phases of the moon appropriate to every operation are duly noted. The spontaneous generation of silkworms from the flesh of a calf, a G 98 A CONTEMPORARY FRENCH AGRICULTURIST survival of the ancient belief in the generation of bees from the flesh of oxen, is described. De Serres finds no inherent improbability in the story, but calls for experi- mental proof, which is just what a sensible man might have been expected to do in the year 1600. The mulberry is not valued in the Thedtre solely because it yields food for the silkworm ; its culture is strongly advocated on account of its bast, which w^as reputed to be highly serviceable for cordage and cloth. The branches, collected at the time of lopping, were soaked and peeled ; the bast was then bruised, dressed and carded, like hemp or flax, and spun. De Serres practised the artificial incubation of eggs, which had long been familiar to the Egyptians and the Chinese. He furnishes curious information about recently introduced animals and plants (guinea-pigs, turkeys, maize, beet-root), the sugar-cane, which he thought might be acclimatised, artificial meadows, greenhouses, then a luxury of princes,^ wind and water-mills, and cisterns made of other materials than stone. ^ The Orangerie at Heidelberg was already famous. Henri IV had one at the Tuileries, and Louis XIV (long after the date of the Theatre) added many to the gardens of Versailles and the Jardin du Roi. SECTION IV. RAY AND SOME OF HIS FELLOW-WORKERS JOHN EAY 1627-1705 FRANCIS WILLUGHBY 1635-1672 Francisci Willughbeii de Middleton in agro Warwicensi, Armigeri, e Regia Societate, Ornithologise libri tres . . . Totura opus recognovit, digessit, sup- plevit Joannes Raius. Sumptus in Chalcographos fecit illustriss. D. Emma Willughby, Vidua. Fol. Lond., 1676. The Ornithology of Francis Willughby ... in three books . . . translated into English, and enlarged with many additions ... to which are added, three considerable discourses, I. Of the Art of Fowling, ... II. Of the Ordering of Singing Birds, III. Of Falconry. By John Ray, Fol. Lond. 1678. Francisci Willughbeii . . . de Historia Piscium Libri quatuor, jussu et sumptibus Societatis Regise Londinensis editi . . . Totura opus recognovit, coaptavit, supplevit, librum etiam primum et secundum integros adjecit Johannes Raius. Fol. Oxon., 1686. [Francisci Willughbeii] Historia Insectorum, opus posthumum, 4to. Lond. 1710. Synopsis methodica animalium quadrupedum et serpentini generis. Auctore Joanne Raio, S.R.S. Svo. Lond. 169,3. Joannis Raii Synopsis methodica avium et piscium ; opus posthumum, &c. Svo. Lond. 1713. Catalogus Plantarum circa Cantabrigiam nasccntium, &c. 12mo. Cam- bridge, 1660. Methodus Plantarum nova, autore Joanne Raio. Svo. Lond., 1682. Jo. Raii Historia Plantarum. 3 vols. Fol. Lond. 1686-1704. Joannis Raii Synopsis Methodica Stirpium Britannicarum . . . Editio secunda. Accessit . . . Rivini Epistola ad Joan. Raium de Methodo : cum ejusdem Responsoria, &c. Svo. Lond. 1606. A Collection of English Proverbs, by J[olm] R[ay]. Svo. Lond. 1670. John Ray, the son of a blacksmith, was born at Bhick Notley in Essex in 1627. He probably showed early 100 RAY AND SOME OF HIS FELLOW-WORKERS talent, for he was sent to the neighbouring grammar school at Braintree, and afterwards, at the cost of one Squire Wyvill, to the university of Cambridge. He became fellow and tutor of Trinity; while still a layman, he was selected to preach before the university, and his discourses attracted some attention. At thirty-five he was not only learned in the ancient literatures, and competent in divinity, but known to some few as a naturalist of great promise. He had gathered about him undergraduates who were fond of natural history, some of them heirs to great estates, and had secured the co-operation of Francis Willughby, the ablest and most zealous of the little company, in a scheme for the methodical investigation of the animals and plants of all accessible parts of the world. He had already traversed most parts of England and Wales, besides the Lowlands of Scotland, in search of rare plants and other natural curiosities, and these travels he was afterwards to extend beyond the seas. Such were Ray's achievements and prospects when his future was darkened by misfortunes heavy enough to crush a man of no more than ordinary courage and patience. Charles H was restored to the throne of his fathers. The change seemed at first propitious to Ray, who was, what he continued to be to the day of his death, a sincere but moderate churchman. He was ordained by Bishop Sanderson a few months after the Restoration, and was looking forward to an honourable career in church and university when the Act of Uni- formity was passed. Ray had no scruples about any of the doctrines or offices of the Church of En2;land. He had never signed the Solemn League and Covenant, which was reprobated by the Act of Uniformity; indeed, he considered it an unlawful oath. But the Act required RAY AND WILLUGHBY 101 liim to declare that the oath was not binding upon those who had taken it, and this Ray could not in conscience do. No scruples of this or any other kind were respected by the High Churchmen who were then dominant in church and state. Ray held no benefice, but he was turned out of his fellowship ; Cambridge and the church were closed to him ; he was deprived of his livelihood, and forced to seek a new calling. Henceforth Ray's life was, in the main, a life of poverty and seclusion. For some years he was supported by his wealthy associate, Francis Willughby, whose children he helped to educate, but Willughby died in 1672, and then Ray was compelled to serve as a tutor under less agreeable conditions. At the age of fifty-two he returned to his native village, to subsist upon a small pension bequeathed to him by Willughby. During the last twenty years of his life he was often kept close to the fireside by painful sores upon his legs. He continued to write and publish to the very last. His works were highly valued by those who could judge, and some of them passed through several editions. But the pub- lishing trade was then very imperfectly organised ; an author had usually to be satisfied with whatever the bookseller chose to allow him, and Ray was probably wretchedly paid for his labours. At his death in 1705 he had less than forty pounds a year to bequeath to his widow and daughters. I have found no single passage in which Ray speaks reproachfully of his persecutors. He seldom mentions his sufferings at all, and then uses particularly calm expressions. In the preface to his Wisdom of God in the Creation he explains that "being not permitted to serve the Church with my Tongue in Preaching, I know not but it may be my Duty to serve it with my Hand 102 RAY AND SOME OF HIS FELLOW-WORKERS by Writing." After the Revolution he had the satis- faction of congratulating himself and his readers upon the triumph of liberty, the purification of religion, and the restoration of the ancient laws of England, but his solemn thanksgiving makes no mention of private injuries.^ The most intimate of Ray's friends was Francis, only son of Sir Francis Willughby of Middleton Hall in Warwickshire and of Wollaton, near Nottingham. The hall at Wollaton, built in 1588, is one of the noblest examples of English domestic architecture. When an undergraduate at Cambridge Willughby came under the influence of Ray, joined him in his journeys, and helped him to frame liberal schemes for the advancement of natural history. After Ray was forced to leave Cam- bridge, the two friends determined to visit foreign countries together. Adding to their party two pupils of Ray, they travelled through the Low Countries, Germany, Switzerland, Bavaria, Italy, Sicily and Malta. Three of them returned through Switzerland and France, while Willughby protracted his tour by a visit to Spain. Ray tells us that his friend had designed a voyage to the new world in order to perfect his History of Animals, but did not live to undertake it. The arrangement of their collections, fresh journeys in the British Isles, and experimental researches engaged the two naturalists for several years more, when Willughby was cut off by a sudden illness. Ray was made one of the executors under Willughby's will, and charged with the education of two sons. Sixty pounds a year (the amount was afterwards slightly increased) was bequeathed to him for life, and this was henceforth his principal livelihood. He married a young woman resident at Middleton Hall, who helped him with ' Preface to the Synopsis Stirpium. RAY AND WILLUGHBY 103 the children. Lady Willughby, the mother of Francis, seems to have promoted in every way the plans of her late son. For three or four years Ray was continued in his office as tutor, and money was found for the publi- cation of the first of the unfinished memoirs which Willughby had left behind him. Then Lady Willughby died, Ray gave up his tutorship, and the Willughby connection seems to have been broken ofi" altogether, except that Ray's pension was still paid.^ The indefatigable Ray, though now reduced to a humble way of life, determined none the less to com- plete by himself the vast enterprise to which he had set his hand. Willughby had left behind him an imperfect Ornithology, an imperfect Ichthyology, and many scat- tered observations on insects. All of these Ray con- trived to publish, having first completed them to the best of his power. Nor did he neglect the share of the work originally assigned to him, which was the descrip- tion and arrangement of the plants, not only of Britain, but of all countries hitherto investigated. WILLUGHBY'S OENITHOLOGY Ray first undertook to revise and complete the Orni- thology, making it his main design to describe accurately each species. " We ourselves," he claims, " did carefully describe each bird from the view and inspection of it lying before us." He finds fault with Willughby's excessive minuteness. " Now though I cannot but commend his diligence, yet I must confess that in describing the colours of each single feather he some- times seems to me to be too scrupulous and particular . . . yet dared I not to omit or alter anything." - He ^ Ray's Synopsis Slirpium (1690) is dedicated to the surviving son of Francis Willughby. ■^ Preface. 104 RAY AND SOME OF HIS FELLOW-WORKERS owns the obligations of the Ornithology to Gesner and Aldrovandi, but claims to have corrected many of their mistakes, such as the making of two or three species out of one. Willughby had made a collection of pictures of birds, and caused various species to be drawn for him by good artists ; from these and published figures a selection was made which Eay thought were the best and truest hitherto engraved. Neither the sources of the figures nor the scale is indicated. Birds of all countries are included. The measure- / ments and the weight of the bird are often given, and a careful note is made of its external features. There are usually rough memoranda concerning the internal anatomy (crop, gizzard, intestine, csecal appendages, \ gall-bladder, trachea, &c.), and the contents of the \ stomach are sometimes mentioned. The eggs of many of the birds are shortly described. The species is iden- tified, if possible, with some species of earlier authors, and a large part of the history is sometimes condensed from Aldrovandi, Gesner, Clusius, Jonston, Belon, Olina, Turner, &c. There are also descriptions of foreign birds taken from Marcgraf (birds of South America), Bontius (East Indies), and others. The uses of the bird in medicine, cookery, falconry, &c., are noted. Harvey or Malpighi may be quoted on some point of anatomy or physiology ; some trustworthy friend may furnish a description or a note of occurrence. The localities mentioned show a wide acquaintance with British topography, and a singular curiosity (in Ray, no doubt) concerning places, names and odd facts of every kind, ■ The popular English names of the birds are given, and now and then names that have some etymological interest. For instance, the following names for the woodpecker are quoted : — woodspite, pickatrees (N. of RAY AND WILLUGHBY 105 England), rain-fowl, liighlioe or heghoe, hew-hole, wit- wall, hickwall. The list might be greatly lengthened ; in Wright's English Dialect Dictionary the woodpecker figures under almost every letter of the alphabet. Wierangle (Germ. Werhengel) is a name for the shrike, flusher [flesherl) for the lesser shrike. The redwing used to be called a toindthrush, and Dr. Charleton, once x/ known as the author of the Onomasticon Zoicum (16G8), traced the name to a belief that the redwing came over in the equinoctial gales. Ray's knowledge of languages showed him that this was a mistake ; the Germans, he says, call the redwing Wyntrostel (Weindrossel), because it is fond of grapes, and we have adopted the German name, changing its form to suit an erroneous interpre- tation.^ Among the helpers to whom he returns thanks Ray mentions Sir Thomas Brown, the author of the Religio Medici, who owned a collection of birds, and had written an account of birds found in Norfolk ; Francis Jessop of Sheffield, Philip Skippon of Wrentham in Suffolk, and Ralph Johnson of Brignall in Teesdale. The fables which are treated so gravely by his pre- decessors receive little consideration. Gryphons, harpies, phoenixes and rocs find no place in this book. Ray is -^' incredulous about the transformation of barnacles into geese, the renewal of their youth by eagles, the incessant flight of birds of paradise, the wool-bearing fowl, the antipathy between the lion and the cock, the six months' sleep of the humming bird, or the milking of goats by the nightjar. The wonderful tales of Nieremberg are put by themselves in an appendix. An introductory section treats of the structure, ip. 190. Turner [Hist. Avitcm) quotes the English name a,s wyngthi-uahe,. and the German as lueingaerdsvogel. 106 RAY AND SOME OF HIS FELLOW-WORKERS development, and mode of life of birds. The anatomical part is largely taken from Willis and Harvey. The sclerotic ring in the eye is mentioned. We are told of the curious rule of the regular increase in the number of the phalanges from the first to the last digit of the foot, a rule which " hath not as yet been taken notice of by any naturalist, that I know" (p. 3). Mention is made of the exception furnished by the swift, in which " the least toe has one joint, and the other three two joints each, contrary to the manner of all other birds that we know beside it" (p. 214). The muscles of flight are mentioned, and we are assured that if men ever fly, it must be with their legs. The wonderful protractile tongue and the prolonged hyoid of the woodpecker are explained and figured. This structure was afterwards redescribed by De la Hire and Mery, and became a favourite proof of the wisdom of Providence. The double-shafted feather of the cassowary, which had been described and figured by Clusius, appears here again. Under the head of development we find mention of the fact that a fowl's egg cannot be easily crushed by the fingers, if the pressure is applied to the two ends. It is boldly affirmed that all animals, even viviparous animals, proceed from eggs ; there was as yet no suspicion that an animal may be budded forth from its parent. Twenty- four questions are printed, which Willughby had pro- posed to himself concerning birds, e.g. whether they cast their claws and bills ; whether the iris is always of the same colour in the same species ; a few of the questions have answers appended to them. There is a brief account of remarkable breeding-places of British birds. Aristotle had said^ that while some birds migrated according to the season of the year, swallows did not, ^ Hist. Animalium, VIII, 15. RAY AND WILLUGHBY 107 but had been found hiding, and entirely bare of feathers, in the winter months. This statement may possibly have encouraged Glaus Magnus,^ or those who prompted him, to publish the ridiculous fable about swallows lying hid at the bottom of lakes and rivers, two together, mouth to mouth and wing to wing. This delusion once set going, false reports were readily produced to support it, and the theory of hibernation did not die out till the end of the eighteenth century. Gilbert White enter- tained to the day of his death a suspicion that the swallows of Selborne never left the country, but merely went into hiding for the winter. Willughby and Ray attributed the seasonal disappearance of the cuckoo, swallows, fieldfare and woodcock to migration, though they had to admit that the truth or falsehood of the ^ tales about hibernation had not been certainly deter- mined. They say of the nightingale that it does not endure cold well, and either goes into hiding in the winter, or departs for warm countries. In the seventeenth century the bustard and the crane were still well-known English birds. Willughby and Ray tell us that in their day the bustard frequented the heaths and plains of Cambridgeshire, Suflblk and other parts of the kingdom." Great flocks of cranes were to be seen in summer in the marshes of Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire. ^ Seventeen domestic races of pigeons are named and described, several being figured ; Aldrovandi had already given a systematic table of the breeds of pigeons. Mention is made of the aviary in St. James' Park, an aery of sea-eagles belonging to the Countess of Pem- ^ Hist, de gentibus septentrionalibus (1555). See supra, p. 59. ■•^ P. 178. The last British-bred bustard was killed in May, 1838. sp. 274. 108 RAY AND SOME OF HIS FELLOW-WORKERS broke at Winfield in Westmoreland, the menagjerie in the Tower of London, the repository of the Royal Society, and the museum of the Tradescants. A decoy for wild ducks is described with the help of rude figures.^ The snaring of pheasants and the daring of larks are explained, as well as the classification of hawks by falconers. Willughby and Ray had little sense of the relative value of zoological characters ; it gives a sufficient idea of their judgment in this matter that they sometimes divide their birds according to size, colour, the nature of the food, the length of the leg, wildness or tameness. For the mere naming of such species as are not finely graded their divisions and sections, which are accom- panied by a key, may have answered pretty well. They are not careful to mark the birds which are described for the first time, but the Whooper Swan, the Herring Gull and the Black Diver (our Common Scoter) they claim as hitherto undescribed. They note that the trachea enters the keel of the sternum in the Whooper, as previously observed by Aldrovaudi, but not in the tame swan. Willughby and Ray explain in their preface the usage which they adopted in this and other books on natural history with respect to the names of what we now call genera and species. They took little trouble, they say, about nomenclature, and usually followed Gesner and Aldrovandi, being unwilling to disturb accepted names. Their chief care was to make it quite clear what bird was denoted by a particular name. They were indiflfer- ent whether the name was Latin or English, of one word or several. Thus we have " Fulica, the Coot," but the ^ P. 372. More elaborate figures are given in Bewick's Water Birds and in Yarrell's Birds. RAY AND WILLUGHBY 109 Black Tern is " Larus niger fidipes noster." They followed the practice, then usual, of giving a name of one word to what we now call a genus, or to a species which stands alone in its genus, but a name of two or more words to each of the species in a large genus. The following is a general view of the classification of Birds adopted by Willughby and Ray. Land Fowl Eapacious Diurnal (include shrikes and cuckoo). Kapacious Nocturnal (include nightjar). The Crow Kind. The Woodpecker Kind (includes wryneck, nuthatch, creeper. hoopoe). The Poultry Kind (includes the landrail). The Pigeon Kind. The Thrush Kind (includes the starling). Small Birds with slender bills. Small Birds with thick bills. Water Fowl Cloven-footed (Waders). Birds of a middle nature between Swimmers and Waders (water-hen, coot, grebe). Whole-footed (Web-footed). Some passages are next extracted, which either yield useful information, or illustrate Ray and Willughby's handling. Lapwing " It builds its nest on the ground, in the middle of some field or heath, open and exposed to view, laying only some few straws or bents under the eggs, that the nest be not seen. The eyes [eggs] being so like in colour to the ground on which they lie, it is not easy to find them though they lie so open. The young, so soon as they are hatcht, instantly forsake the nest, running away, as the common tradition is, with the shell upon 110 RAY AND SOME OF HIS FELLOW- WORKERS their heads, for they are covered with a thick down, and follow the old ones like chickens. They say that a lapwing, the further you are from her nest, the more clamorous she is, and the greater coil she keeps ; the nearer you are to it, the quieter she is, and less con- cerned she seems, that she may draw you away from the true place, and induce you to think it is where it is not." ' Bittern " They say that it gives always an odd number of bombs [booms] at a time, viz., three or five; which in my own observation I have found to be false. It begins to bellow about the beginning of February, and ceases when breeding-time is over. The common people are of opinion that it thrusts its bill into a reed, by the help whereof it makes that lowing or drumming noise. Others say that it thrusts its bill into the water, or mud, or earth, and by that means imitates the lowings of an ox. It hides itself, commonly among reeds and rushes, and sometimes lies in hedges /ji-^ with its neck and head <^yqqX./'^^A*^/^''^^ ^^-^^^^^ ^^****^''*<^ ^-^^.j^^**-^* In the autumn after sunset these birds are wont -" >w*i«-^to soar aloft in the air with a spiral ascent, so high '-^^/^' till they get quite out of sight, in the meantime making a singular kind of noise, nothing like to lowing." ^ Kingjislier " It is a vulgar persuasion that this bird, being hung up on an untwisted thread by the bill in any room, will 1 p. 308. » 2 Pp. 282-3. "Few people in Britain have ever heard its loud and awful voice" (Newton, Dicty. of Birds). The last bittern's egg was taken in Norfolk in 1868, and the "boom" was last heard in 1886 (Southwell, Xotes and Letters of Sir T. Browne, p. 17 n.). Since this note was written the bittern has again bred in Norfolk, as Miss E. L. Turner states in British Birds, Sept. 1911. EAY AND WILLUGHBY 111 turn its breast to that quarter of the heaven whence the wind blows. They that doubt of it may try it." ^ Blackhird " The blackbird builds her nest very artificially with- outside of moss, slender twigs, bents and fibres of roots, cemented and joined together with clay instead of glue, daubing it also all over withinside with clay. Yet doth she not lay her eggs upon the bare clay, like the mavis, but lines it with a covering of small straw^s, bents, hair, or other soft matter, upon which she lays her eggs, both that they might be more secure and in less danger of breaking, and also that her young might lie softer and warmer." ^ Kites " They are very noisome to tame birds, especially chickens, ducklings and goslings, among which espying one far from shelter, or that is carelessly separated a good distance from the rest, or by any other means lies fit and exposed to rapine, they single it out, and fly round and round for a while, marking it ; then of a sudden dart down as swift as lightning, and catch it up before it is aware, the dam in vain crying out, and men with hooting and stones scaring them away. Yea, so bold are they that they afi'ect to prey in cities and places frequented by men, so that the very gardens and courts or yards of houses are not secure from their ravine. For which cause our good housewives are very angry with them, and of all birds hate and curse them the most."^ WILLUGHBY'S HISTORY OF FISHES Beyond the statement on the title-page that the first and second books, which treat of fishes in general and of iP. 146. 2p 191^ ^ p. 75. For an earlier account of kites in London see p. 78. ( »• •« v* **-\-) 112 RAY AND SOME OF HIS FELLOW- WORKERS the cetaceans, were written by Ray, we have no distinct indication how much of the book is Ray's, how much Willughby's. Here, as in the Ornithology, we can only o'uess whose are the thoug-hts and statements which we have before us. The authors had visited all the best-known fishing stations in England, Holland, Germany, France, and Italy. ^ They were however unable to make themselves personally acquainted with more than a small proportion of the fishes known to Belon and Rondelet. Most of the figures are copied ; ^ among such as are original a few, e.g. that of the perch, are life-like. It cannot be said that this is a very important contribution to natural history. Much is taken from Rondelet. The " cetacean fishes " are retained,^ and Lophius keeps its old place among the cartilaginous fishes. It is something that invertebrate aquatic animals are excluded, and that classification by habitat is abandoned. Useful characters are drawn from the texture of the fins and the number of dorsal fins. We find a description of the uses of whalebone, which reminds us how long certain fashions have lasted : " Laminis illis cornels, quse palata hujus piscis inna- scuntur, fissis et perpolitis, politiores mulierculse sua pectoralia communire, vestiumque fibras rigidiores et rotundiores continere ; atque apparitores publici virgu- larum ac fascium loco gestare solent, ut recte Bellonius." '^ 1 In a letter to Dr. Tancred Robinson (Ray Correspondence, ed. of Ray Soc, p. 166) Ray laments that all his notes on the animals of High and Low Germany had been lost. -Belon, Rondelet, Salviani, Gesner and Maregraf are among the authors drawn upon. ■^ Supra, p. 49. ■*?. 38. "Bellonius" is, of course, Belon. The whalebone occasionally mentioned in mediaeval authors was white, and cut from walrus-teeth (Wright, Homes of other Days, p. 119). RAY AND WILLUGHBY 113 After saying that sharks have the mouth so placed that they must turn over to seize their prey, Willughljy and Kay explain that this is a provision of nature for securing the safety of other fishes, and also for pre- venting the sharks from perishing by their own greedi- ness.^ In the same way De Geer admires the providential instinct which causes scorpions to kill one another whenever they meet, and so hinders these " insectes nialfaisans " from becoming too numerous.^ Natural theology, which undertakes to justify all the arrange- ments of nature, finds it necessary to maintain that she sometimes parries her own blows. Our authors think that the fish which swallowed Jonah must have been a shark, not a whale, because (l) the whale has a very contracted throat ; (2) whales are very seldom seen in the Mediterranean ; and (3) the fish in whose belly Hercules spent three days was, according to Lycophron, a shark. ^ THE HISTOEIA INSECTORUM, 1710 The weakness of attempting too much appears more strongly in Ray's History of Insects than in any other '^- of his writings. The indefatigable old man laboured to the last to complete his gigantic task, which included an ornithology, an ichthyology and a history of plants. It -^ was in his eyes a sacred duty to rescue from oblivion even the scattered observations on insects made forty years before by his friend and fellow- worker. These fragmen- tary materials Ray supplemented by new observations of no great moment, such as brief descriptions of caterpillars (whose later stages were still undiscovered, and which are arranged only by the year of observation), or short notes by Lister and Derham. Meanwhile the founda- 1 p. 45. '^Hist. des Insectes, Vol. VII, p. 337. =*?. 48. H -K 114 RAY AND SOME OF HIS FELLOW- WORKERS tions of a real History of Insects had been laid by Swammerdam {infra, p. 181). The classification adopted by Ray may be passed by without remark ; the ancients and Swammerdam furnish all that is of value. I find no original passages which call for extraction, only at long intervals such curiosities of natural history as Pappus' remarks on the advantage for storing of the hexagonal cells of the honeycomb, Mentzel's account of the vinegar-fly (Drosophila), Derham's notices of gnats, blood-worms and the Corethra-larva, which he calls an " animated shadow." Some of Willughby's papers in the Philosophical Trayisactions are of interest, such as his account of ichneumons,^ and of the leaf cutting bee (" bees bred in cartridges ").^ THE CATALOGUE OF CAMBRIDGE PLANTS In his preface Ray speaks of the ill-health which had obliged him to spend some of his time in riding or walking, and had thus favoured his open-air studies. The riding (alas !) became impossible in later years, but Ray continued to be an ardent field-naturalist, until he could walk no more. When he began to pay attention to plants, no one in the university had a passable know- ledge of botany, and even the smatterers were few. He seems to have thought that botany had actually declined, for he speaks of it as " extinctum psene et intermortuum." Ray adopted the nomenclature of J. and C. Bauhin, and of the English herbalists Gerard and Parkinson, simply because their books were so well known. John Bauhin's History he cannot praise too highly, and Caspar Bauhin's Pinax was of great use to him ; Gerard and Parkinson he thought little of. 1 PhU. Trans. No. 76 (1670). ^Ibid. Nos. 65, 74. Of. Lister, ibid. No. 160. RAY AND WILLUGHBY 115 The mention of the two Bauhins reminds us that in the interval between L'Obel and Ray systematic botany had made real progress. Reverence for the ancients had orrown less servile, the demands of pharmacy less exorbitant, figures of common plants less indispensable. Caspar Bauhin had rectified the intolerable confusion of plant-names. Jung {infra, p. 123 n.) had framed a well-considered botanical termi- nology. The sense of natural afiinities had become more enlightened, though the best naturalists were still misled by adaptive resemblance, and plants were brought together merely because they agreed in being aquatic, or in climbing, or in possessing trefoil leaves. One old and laudable practice was firmly adhered to ; botanists sought first to discern, and then to define, jQ the groups which exist in nature ; no one imitated Cesalpini in proposing a new classification simply because it struck him as precise and logical. The natural families recognised were however so few (less than a dozen), tliat Ray at first employed an alphabetical sequence of genera, and this is what we find in the Catalogue of Cambridge Plants. The Catalogue, of 1660 contains 671 species of wild plants. An appendix (1663) added 37 species, and Peter Dent's edition of this appendix (1685) 59 more. In the Catalogue of English Plants (1670, 1677) Ray marked the Cambridgeshire species by the letter C, so that this catalogue is a kind of supplement to the Cambridge one. The Martyns (father and son), Relhan and Babington have since revised the flora of Cambridge- shire, and the last-named botanist has noted the changes due to the interference of man since Ray's time. To many of the plants Ray appends notes, and here he allows himself great latitude, quoting sayings of v>.. 116 RAY AND SOME OF HIS FELLOW- WORKERS authors, observations on insects which feed upon the plants, and anything else which might prove useful to his pupils. These notes are often curious, and throw light upon the state of natural history in 1660, Lut the want of arrangement is so troublesome that the reader may be obliged to make an index for himself. Some notable passages will now be extracted in a con- densed form. Uncertainty of Nomenclature It is startling to find Ruta, Salvia, Paronychia, Saxifraga and Empetron given as synonyms of Adiantum; or Tussilago and Chrysanthemum as synonyms of Caltha, but parallel cases are to be found in Caspar Bauhin's Pinax. When it was thought legitimate to group plants by the shape of the leaf, or the medicinal virtues "^ (often quite imaginary), the most eccentric associations were possible. Both in this Catalogue and in the later Synopsis Stirpium a species is usually an indivisible group of plants, while a genus is a group of species. The ten species of Willow, for example, are arranged in the Catalogue under two genera. This sense of the word genus is not, however, invariable ; genus may mean no more than kind or sort.^ What we call the generic name is with Ray " the name," to which he affixes an adjectival "epithet" characteristic of the species. Different genera do not necessarily bear different " names," either in the Cambridge Catalogue or in the Synopsis. Thus clover and wood-sorrel are both called Trifolium, though they are placed (in the Synopsis) in different parts of the system. Ray quotes from 1 Examples occur in Cat. Cantab, under the heads of Lupulus, Hordeura, Triticum, &c. RAY AND WILLUGHBY 117 Spigel the remark that no name is applied to so many " genera " as Trifolium.^ He apparently thought it no more necessary to alter the generic names of plants to suit his views on system than to alter the names- of towns or men so as to make them accord with some logical method. Wood-sorrel had long before Ray's time been distinguished from Trifolium as Oxys (by Valerius Cordus), but Ray cared little about the name so long as it was clear what plant was denoted. Fern-seed Under Filix fcemina authorities are quoted on both sides of the question whether ferns bear seeds or not. Ray supports the negative side, and argues that various plants lack one of the organs which are considered to be essential. Gelsemimum (Jasmine) has no fruit, Fig no flower. Asparagus and Dodder no leaves, Mistletoe no root. Cuckoo-sjnt {Frog-hop2Jer) t./7t^