FRANCIS WILLUGHBY. 27 



useful by the greatest masters of the science, 

 cannot but be looked upon as truly wonderful." 



In the history of Solomon, who flourished 

 about a thousand years before Christ, we meet 

 with the next most ancient recognition of the 

 study of Natural History. In the account given 

 of that monarch's attainments, in the first Book 

 of Kings, 4th chapter and 33d verse, it is stated, 

 that " he spake of trees, from the cedar that is on 

 Lebanon, even unto the hyssop, (or moss,* rather, 

 the first trace of vegetable germination,) that 

 springeth out of the wall ; he spake also of beasts, 

 and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of 

 fishes ;" in which account it is worthy of remark, 

 that, with the addition of trees, the same distri- 

 bution is adopted, and in the same order as that 

 which occurs in the words stated to have been 

 spoken of God to Noah thirteen centuries be- 

 fore. 



Though it is impossible to say, amid the 

 absence of all means of judging, except isolated 

 assertions like these, what were the real attain- 

 m'ents of Solomon in Natural History ; it will 

 not be thought a hazardous conjecture, that they, 

 at least, included a correct acquaintance with 

 that system, as far as it extends, which is involved 

 in the Levitical ritual. How far his mind, highly 

 gifted by nature, and endowed with superhuman 

 sagacity, might have rendered that system the 

 nucleus of more extended inquiries, aided as he 



* Hasselquist. 



