14 STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



comprehension and the credulity of the sixteenth 

 century, and was doubtless held in much higher 

 estimation than the masterly but too philosophic 

 treatise of the great Aristotle. The laborious 

 naturalists alluded to were Conrad Gesner* and 

 Ulysses Aldrovandus ; the first a physician of 

 Zurich, the latter of a noble house of Bologna, in 

 the university of which city he was a professor. 

 Gesner was born in 1516, and died at the age of 49 ; 

 so that it would seem he did not live to see the 

 publication of his work, which was printed in three 

 folio volumes at Frankfort, in the year 1585. He 

 appears to have been an industrious compiler of 

 other men's labours, adding little of his own, and 

 quite destitute of all notions of system, the subjects 

 being arranged alphabetically. This voluminous 

 compendium is ornamented with wood-cuts of very 

 unequal execution ; some being very tolerable, others 

 very bad. Aldrovandus, who must have been work- 

 ing at the same time (for he was born in 1525), 

 dedicated his life and his fortune to a similar under- 

 taking, still more diffuse and voluminous than the 

 compilation of Gesner: he, likewise, lived not to see 

 the publication of his work, which extended to no 

 less than fourteen folio volumes, the greatest portion 

 of which were printed after his death. The original 

 descriptions in this work are more numerous and 

 accurate than those of Gesner, but its author had 

 little judgment and still less genius for his task : he 

 collects from all quarters every thing that had been 



* Conrade Gesneri Tigurini, Historia Animalium. Franco, 

 furti, 1585. 



