-_. « eS.” _ 
Fs Om THE SECOND BOOK. 87 
instances of exception to general kinds. It is true, I 
find a number of books of fabulous experiments and 
secrets, and frivolous impostures for pleasure and strange- 
ness; but a substantial and severe collection of the 
heteroclites or irregulars of nature, well examined and 
described, I find not: specially not with due rejection of 
fables and popular errors. For as things now are, if an 
untruth in nature be once on foot, what by reason of the 
neglect of examination, and countenance of antiquity, and 
what by reason of the use of the opinion in similitudes 
and ornaments of speech, it is never called down. 
4. The use of this work, honoured with a precedent 
in Aristotle, is nothing less than to give contentment to 
the appetite of curious and vain wits, as the manner of 
Mirabilaries is to do; but for two reasons, both of great 
weight; the one to correct the partiality of axioms and 
opinions, which are commonly framed only upon com- 
mon and familiar examples; the other because from the 
wonders of nature is the nearest intelligence and passage 
towards the wonders of art: for it is no more but by 
following, and as it were hounding nature in her wander- 
ings, to be able to lead her afterwards to the same place 
again. Neither am I of opinion, in this history of mar- 
vels, that superstitious narrations of sorceries, witchcrafts, 
dreams, divinations, and the like, where there is an 
assurance and clear evidence of the fact, be altogether 
excluded. For it is not yet known in what cases and 
how far effects attributed to superstition do participate 
of natural causes: and therefore howsoever the practice 
of such things is to be condemned, yet from the specu- 
lation and consideration of them light may be taken, not 
only for the discerning of the offences, but for the further 
disclosing of nature. Neither ought a man to make 
