RISE AND PROGRESS OF ZOOLOGY. 15 
written upon animals, whether true or false; while 
the facts he must have had the power of verifying, 
and the fables that he might have detected and 
exploded, are confusedly mixed together, as if to 
swell the cumbrous folios upon which he had spent 
his life in compiling.* That both these works, how- 
ever, were greatly instrumental in diffusing a taste 
for the study of nature is very apparent, even from 
the simple fact of their sale being so great as to 
induce the publishers of that period to incur the 
enormous expense of printing them. We question 
very much, whether any bookseller of the present 
age would undertake to bring out fourteen folio 
volumes upon natural history, even were they 
to contain the joint labours of all the eminent 
naturalists of the present age. While this great 
compilation, or rather encyclopedia, of zoological 
knowledge was in progress, Fabius Colonna, a phy- 
sician of Rome, published two treatises on natural 
history, of a much higher character than those of 
his contemporaries, and which have procured for 
their author a high reputation from the moderns. 
(9.) A taste for natural history had hitherto 
been confined to the Continent, but in the year 
1634 it had at length reached England; and the 
Theatrum Insectorum of Mouffet came forth as 
the first zoological work ever printed in Britain. 
Mouffet appears to have been physician to the 
earl of Pembroke, and to have made insects his 
sole object of study: nor was he the only one who 

* Ulysses Aldrovandus. Philosophi et Medici Bononien- 
sis Historia Naturalium, in Gymnasio Bononiensi profitentis. 
