ful habits and powers, and he described imperfectly well- 

 known animals without essaying systematic classification. 

 This "was first attempted in a scientific spirit by the "German 

 Pliny," Conrad Gesner, Professor of natural history at Zurich, 

 whose "History of Animals," published in 1551, is the basis 

 of all modern zoology; his younger contemporary, Ulysses 

 Aldrovandus, who held the chair of natural history at Bo- 

 logna, published six large folio volumes illustrated with 

 wood cuts of many of the animals, his descriptions being in 

 part taken from the work of Gesner. Aldrovandus founded 

 a museum of natural history, and established one of the 

 earliest of botanical gardens, in Bologna (1567), in which 

 medicinal plants were especially cultivated. And about the 

 same time Dr. Pierre Belon in France published a most im- 

 portant treatise on birds (1555); Belon resided in a chateau 

 near Paris given him by the reigning sovereign and while 

 collecting plants in the Bois de Boulogne was murdered by 

 highwaymen. Another French physician, Guillaume Rondelet, 

 was engaged at this period on a complete history of fishes 

 (1558); these two works being early attempts at specializa- 

 tion in natural history. 



The labors of scientific men do not become part of popular 

 knowledge in their generation, and correct ideas of animals 

 were less widely held than .the far more fascinating notions 

 of fabulous monsters; credence was given to the phoenix, a 

 bird that after many hundred years burned herself in order 

 that another might arise from her ashes ; to the salamander 

 that lived comfortably in the hottest of fires; and to the 

 basilisk, or cockatrice, a monster hatched by a serpent, or 

 by a toad, from a cock's egg, and possessing the power of 

 killing men at a distance by venom projected from its eye:^ 



"Mischiefs are like the cockatrice's eye; 



If they see first, they kill; if seen they die." 



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