TO 



THE READER. 



HAVING had the honour to be continually with my 

 lord in compiling of this work, and to be employed 

 therein, I have thought it not amiss, with his lord 

 ship s good leave and liking, for the better satis 

 faction of those that shall read it, to make known 

 somewhat of his lordship s intentions touching the 

 ordering, and publishing of the same. I have heard 

 his lordship often say, that if he should have served 

 the glory of his own name, he had been better not 

 to have published this Natural History : for it may 

 seem an indigested heap of particulars, and cannot 

 have that lustre, which books cast into methods 

 have; but that he resolved to prefer the good 

 of men, and that which might best secure it, before 

 any thing that might have relation to himself. And 

 he knew well, that there was no other way open to 

 unloose men s minds, being bound, and, as it were, 

 maleficiate, by the charms of deceiving notions and 

 theories, and thereby made impotent for generation 

 of works, but only no where to depart from the 

 sense, and clear experience, but to keep close to it, 

 especially in the beginning : besides, this Natural 



