494 HISTORY OF CONCHOLOGY. 



of society among the Romans, it is not difficult to find causes 

 for their total neglect of natural history ; * and these ope- 

 rated with peculiar force when Pliny began to collect to- 

 gether the materials of his great encyclopaedia. Devoted in 

 an especial manner to a public life, the Romans were negli- 

 gent of a study, which, so far from enhancing their reputa- 

 tion with the people, required a comparative seclusion to be 

 successfully pursued ; while the disrelish for every science 

 requiring a continuous and sober observation of facts and 

 experiments was heightened, at the period we refer to, by a 

 general luxury that had risen to an almost incredible pitch, 

 and by the mental excitability produced by their foreign con- 

 quests and discoveries ; for the tales of their travellers, and 

 the new and uncommon animals sent home from every quar- 

 ter to supply the theatre and circus, had rendered the minds 

 of the people — one and all — pliant to credulity, and apt to 

 receive every monstrous tale, and equally indisposed to at- 

 tend to the simple phenomena displayed in the ordinary 

 economy of animal life. Pliny largely participated the taste 

 and credulity of his age, and hence his work is the very anti- 

 type of the Greeks, — ample in its details of the use and value 

 of pearls and Tyrian purple, of anecdotes of the follies of the 

 rich in their dress, and in their dishes of snails and oysters, 

 &c. ; while he caters from every source wonderful stories of 

 the feats of gigantic cuttles, and of the surprising intelli- 

 gence and habits of these and other Molluscans which God 

 verily hath made, in harmony with their lower organization, 

 feeble of instinct and in power. To Conchology as a science 

 he has added nothing which Aristotle did not supply ; but he 

 furnishes some anecdotes for a chapter on its economical ap- 

 plications, and has graced its history with some tramontane 

 and amusing fictions. 



Of the ancients, Aristotle and Pliny are the only names 

 which merit quotation in a history of conchology, and many 

 centuries elapse before we again meet with one whose writ- 

 ings give some indication of its progress. The turmoil of 

 society which accompanied and followed the decline and fall 

 of the Roman Empire, — the engrossing nature of the reli- 

 gion and superstitions of the dark ages, — the exclusive atten- 

 tion bestowed on the writings of the ancients at the revival 



* " Cette lenteur de civilisation chez les Romains, qui d'ailleurs envoy- 

 aient des ambassadeurs aux Grecs, fut le resultat de leur politique, qui re- 

 poussait les arts et les sciences comme des choses capables d'amollir les 

 homines, et par consequent de de'truire les mceurs guerrieres de la repub- 

 lique. Pendant plusieurs siecles Rome n'eut aucun ecrivain."— Cuvikr, Hist, 

 des Sc. Nat. i. 213. — Also Craigie in Edinb. New Phil. Journ. xxiv. 156. 



