06 ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



The first of these parts, the history of creatures, is ex 

 tant in tolerable perfection; but the two others, the history 

 of monsters and the history of arts, may be noted as defi 

 cient. For I find no competent collection of the works of 

 nature digressing from the ordinary course of generations, 

 productions, and motions; whether they be singularities of 

 place and region, or strange events of time and chance; 

 effects of unknown properties, or instances of exceptions 

 to general rules. We have indeed many books of fabu 

 lous experiments, secrets, and frivolous impostures, for 

 pleasure and strangeness; but a substantial and well- 

 purged collection of heteroclites, or irregularities of na 

 ture, carefully examined and described, especially with a 

 due rejection of fable and popular error, is wanting: for 

 as things now stand, if false facts in nature be once on 

 foot, through the neglect of examination, the countenance 

 of antiquity, and the use made of them in discourse, they 

 are scarce ever retracted. 



The design of such a work, of which we have a prece 

 dent in Aristotle, is not to content curious and vain minds, 

 but 1, to correct the depravity of axioms and opinions, 

 founded upon common and familiar examples; and 2, to 

 show the wonders of nature, which give the shortest pas 

 sage to the wonders of art; for byjcarefully tracing nature 

 in her wanderings, we may be enabled to lead or compel 

 her to the same again. Nor would we in this history of 

 wonders have superstitious narrations of sorceries, witch 

 crafts, dreams, divinations, etc., totally excluded, where 

 there is full evidence of the fact; because it is not yet 

 known in what cases, and how far effects attributed to 

 superstition, depend upon natural causes. And, therefore, 

 though the practice of such things is to be condemned; 

 yet the consideration of them may afford light, not only 

 in judging criminals, but in a deeper disclosure of nature. 

 Nor should men scruple examining into these things, in 

 order to discover truth: the sun, though it passes through 

 dirty places, yet remains as pure as before. Those narra- 



