RENAISSANCE 93 



work entitled De differentiis anhnalium, on which he worked for several 

 decades. In this book he shows himself a faithful follower of Aristotle, 

 whom he imitates both in his method of classification and in the field of 

 anatomy. His division of the animal kingdom is entirely Aristotelean: san- 

 guineous animals and non-sanguineous, viviparous and oviparous quadru- 

 peds, and so on. Nevertheless he criticizes his classical predecessors to the 

 extent that he does not accept without reservation the masses of fabulous 

 animals which they invent, but on the other hand he has nothing to say 

 about the many new animal forms which the explorers in his own century 

 brought home with them and which otherwise excited general interest 

 among his contemporaries, both educated and uneducated. Yet he contributes 

 much information regarding the medicines which may be extracted from the 

 various animal forms. As a profound exponent of Aristotle and representa- 

 tive of his ideas, Wotton came to exercise no small influence on his age, 

 particularly upon the man who eventually became the finest zoological 

 representative of the Renaissance, Gesner. 



KoNRAD Gesner was born at Zurich in 15 16. His father was a Protestant 

 artisan, who fell in 1531 at the famous battle of Kappel, in which the civic 

 guard of Zurich, under the reformer Zwingli, were defeated by the Catholics. 

 Young Konrad, who had previously been sent to a good school, was now 

 unprotected, but his great reputation for zeal and energy brought him friends, 

 who sent him to study at their expense in Basel, Paris, and Montpellier. At 

 these places he studied such different subjects as classical and oriental lan- 

 guages, natural science, and medicine, and in general acquired in an unparal- 

 leled degree that many-sidedness in learning which during the Renaissance 

 was particularly appreciated and admired. After having been for some time 

 professor of Greek in Lausanne, he was appointed first town-physician at 

 Zurich, which was at that time a moderately salaried post. There he died of 

 a plague that ravaged the town in 1665 — that is, when he was still under 

 fifty. Of a quiet and unambitious nature, he had a constant struggle against 

 financial difficulties, which compelled him to wear out his strength in ill- 

 paid hack-work. His energy was marvellous. He published and made com- 

 mentaries on classical authors; he compiled dictionaries, wrote a lexicon of 

 classical literature, which must have been a very fine work for his period, 

 and was the author of works on popular medicine. Besides all this he found 

 time for extensive journeys both for scientific purposes and for pleasure — 

 he was one of the very first to be interested in mountain-climbing, and he 

 had a keen feeling for Alpine beauty — and finally he had the time and lei- 

 sure to carry out one of the greatest biological works the world has seen. 



Gesner's Historia animalium comprises four immense folio volumes of 

 about 3,500 pages in all. The animals are arranged according to the principles 

 of Aristotle; the first part includes viviparous and oviparous quadrupeds, the 



