HISTORY OF ENTOMOLOGY. 437 



worms, flies asjly-worms, spiders as spider-worms ; and 

 what is still more extraordinary, the toad and the^cg, 

 which he includes amongst his Anulosa, he calls qua- 

 druped-worms a ! ! Though it may appear so absurd to 

 speak of these animals as insects, yet he had perhaps a 

 deeper and more philosophical reason for this than 

 we may at first be disposed to give him credit for. 

 This would be the case if he separated these from 

 the other reptiles and placed them amongst insects on 

 account of their metamorphoses, mistaking perhaps an 

 analogical character for one of affinity 5 . Some of the 

 Annelida, as Filaria and Lumbricus c , he also regarded 

 as insects. I cannot gather from his desultory pages 

 that he had any notion of a systematical arrangement of 

 his A?iulosa. 



After the taking of Constantinople by the Turks in 

 the middle of the fifteenth century, the light of learning, 

 kindled by those of its professors who escaped from that 

 ruin, appeared again in the West. The Greek language 

 then began to be studied universally; and in consequence 

 of the coeval invention of the art of printing, various 

 editions of the great works of the ancients were publish- 

 ed : amongst the rest those of the fathers of Natural 

 History. From the perusal of these, the love of the 

 sciences of which they treated revived in the West, 

 and the attention of scientific men began to direct itself 

 to the consideration and study of the works of their 

 CREATOR. In the latter part of that century, a work 

 entitled the Book of Nature appeared in the German 

 language, in which animals and plants were treated of 



8 Opera vi. 676, 670, 680. b See above, p. 428. 



Opera vi. 682. 



