Foure-Footed Beastes. 277 



ment, apparently, as lie tells us that he had " not 

 any accesse of maintenance, receiving no more but 

 a labourers wages/' We are informed that his 

 " endeavor and paines in this Booke was that he 

 might profit and delight the Reader, where into 

 he may looke on the holyest daies (not omitting 

 prayer and the publicke service of God), and pass 

 away the Sabbaoths in heavenly meditations upon 

 earthly creatures/' and he succeeded so well in his 

 endeavour that the reader must be hard to please 

 who cannot find much to delight him in the curious 

 pot-pourri of fact and fiction which the worthy 

 divine collected together in his 760 folio pages. 

 Of course, in the early days of the seventeenth 

 century zoology had not been raised to the dignity 

 of a science ; in fact, it had advanced but little, if 

 at all, since the days of Pliny, whom our author 

 constantly quotes as an authority. And it may 

 therefore, be easily imagined that fiction very 

 largely preponderates over fact; but the result is 

 quaint beyond measure. Topsell tells us that he 

 followed "D. Gesner, a Protestant Physitian, as 

 neer as he could," and adds the odd remark, " A 

 rare thing to finde any Religion in a Physitian, 

 although Saint Luke, a physitian, were a writer of 

 the Gospell." He evidently expected that many 

 of his tales would be received with incredulity ; 

 for in his epistle dedicatory he says : " For the 

 rude and vulgar sort (who being utterly ignorant 

 of the operation of learning, do presently condemne 

 al strange things which are not ingrave in the 



