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 encyclopaedia, 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. 

 Bononia?, 1,599 — 1640. 



