1. 3-] 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 



