8 STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 
behind to follow in his wake, still less to throw 
additional light upon realms which he had but 
glanced upon. From the decline of Grecian learn- 
ing until its partial revival among the semi-barbaric 
Romans, a long interval of darkness intervened ; and 
it was only after a lapse of nearly 400 years that we 
find a solitary philosopher—the elder Pliny —call- 
ing the attention of his countrymen to the wonders 
of nature, and following up the pursuits of the 
Grecian sage. The Roman naturalist strove to 
follow in the path of his great predecessor ; for, 
like him, he undertook to illuminate the whole em- 
pire of science and of learning: but he had neither 
the erudition nor the genius requisite for his gi- 
gantic project. His voluminous works rather show 
us a compilation of other men’s thoughts and dis- 
coveries, than a selection of well digested inform- 
ation, or of original research. We find the wheat 
intermixed with an abundance of chaff: the nu- 
tritive grain and the useless straw are equally 
hoarded, and brought into the garner. Amidst all 
the polished graces of diction, great and diversified 
erudition, and no inaptitude for occasionally de- 
scribing with clearness and precision, we look in 
vain for the powerful genius and the originality of 
thought of his great master, and we at once per- 
ceive that natural history, or rather zoology, under 
the Romans, had made a retrograde movement. The 
powerful mind of Aristotle, which led him to reject 
with disdain the credulous tales and fabulous stories 
of the age, can nowhere be traced in the writings 
of Pliny, whose works, on the contrary, abound in 
fables and in prodigies, at once manifesting that 
