598 TAXONOMY. 



works are abridged that the author had read in the course of a lift- 

 devoted to science, and which was sacrificed in the contemplation of a 

 magnificent natural phenomenon. Much is therefore collected without 

 any criticism ; what was new was not at all introduced, and the old 

 frequently distorted by the mode of communication. 



Elian's " Natural History of Animals " properly contains merely 

 anecdotes and characteristic features of individual animals, and no 

 zoological description, and may be therefore merely noticed. 



338. 



Since Aristotle, nothing of any consequence, either in antiquity or 

 in the middle ages, was done for the natural history of animals ; so 

 that we leap over a space of more than 1800 years, and with Conrad 

 Gesner re-commence our historical detail. 



He, a poor but industrious Swiss (born in 1516), collected every- 

 thing that was known relative to the history of animals ; he filled up 

 many gaps by his personal observations, and thus filled five large folios 

 with merely the natural history of the vertebrata. Before he reached 

 insects, death carried him off (1558). His posthumous papers upon 

 this subject fell into the hands of the well-known Joachim Kamerarius, 

 of whom they were purchased by an Englishman, Dr. E. Wotton, 

 who sent them to Thomas Penn, in London, to be published ; he, how- 

 ever, did not fulfil the commission, but these papers fell, when he died, 

 into the hands of Thomas Moufet, who incorporated them with his 

 " Theatro Insectorum," and they were thus imparted to the world 

 about a century after their origin (1634). 



Gesner is justly considered as the restorer of natural history ; it was 

 by means of his extraordinary industry that long lost treasures were 

 again made known to that age, which was thus stimulated to further 

 researches ; had he not existed the world would doubtlessly have still 

 much longer slept. 



His influence, however, did not so much exhibit itself in the natural 

 history of insects from the above causes, and it was still several lustres 

 before they were independently and satisfactorily elaborated. 



Ulysses Aldrovandus was the first who took notice of these forgotten 

 creatures, and described them and their natural history in seven 

 books. We here find the first division of insects into land and water 

 dwellers, two chief groups, which were still further divided according 

 to the structure of their legs and wings. 



