10 STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



Pliny made but little effective use. If any further 

 proofs were requisite to show the declension of 

 natural history under the Romans, it would only 

 be necessary to cite the fables and absurdities of 

 iElian, and one or two others, with whom expired 

 all records of the science for nearly 1400 years. 



(7.) The second era of our history commences 

 with the revival of learning in the sixteenth century, 

 and terminates with the institution of system by 

 our celebrated countrymen Lister, Willughby, and 

 Ray. It is difficult to trace the first dawn of natural 

 history during this period, or to ascertain which 

 was the first printed book that treated on the nature 

 of animals. The Ortus Sanitatis*, printed in 1485, 

 a most curious and exceedingly rare book, is the 

 earliest we have seen ; and, to judge from the 

 grotesque rudeness of its figures, was, perhaps, one 

 of the very first attempts to represent animals by 

 wood-cuts. Passing over, however, this and similar 

 memorials of a dark age, the first writer who really 

 deserves notice is Belon of Mans, who was born in 

 1517, and who seems to have made the history of 

 birds his exclusive study. He may not have been 

 the first writer on natural history, in regard to 

 priority, since the revival of science, but he was 

 most assuredly the first who treated the subject with 

 any regard to system ; and when we consider the 

 unenlightened era in which he lived, and the diffi- 



* Ortus Sanitatis. De herbis et plantis, de animalibus et 

 reptilibus, de avibus et volatilibus, de piscibus et natatilibus, 

 de lapidibus, Sec. 1485. Small folio. Ascribed by some to 

 a Doctor Cuba. 



