UNNATURAL HISTORY: ANCIENT 

 AND MODERN 



IT is one of the most curious facts of history that, 

 until quite recently, men, although they noticed 

 animals and wrote about them, seem never to 

 have taken the least trouble to observe their 

 habits. In ancient and mediaeval times zoological 

 writers were perfectly content to rely on hearsay. 

 They were not naturalists in any sense of the term. 

 They were plagiarists, who did not profess to have even 

 seen most of the creatures about which they wrote, 

 much less to have observed their habits. Every writer 

 in the Middle Ages copied largely from Aristotle and 

 Plato, and incorporated in his works every traveller's 

 tale he heard. No story seems to have been too 

 childish, no occurrence too improbable, no exaggeration 

 too great, no description too grotesque, to be credited 

 by mediaeval zoologists. Their bestiaries are crowded 

 with animals that have never lived, while the accounts 

 of those which do exist are altogether untrue. 



Take the case of the races of men which, according 

 to mediaeval writers, peopled the various parts of the 

 earth. The pigmies first demand our attention. Maunde- 

 ville gives a graphic description of them ; they are of 



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