48 FATHERS OF BIOLOGY 



little. This was largely due to the encyclopaedic 

 character of the work he undertook ; his mental powers 

 were weighed down by an enormous mass of unarranged 

 and ill-digested materials. But it was due also to the 

 peculiar bent of Pliny's mind.. He was not, like Aristotle, 

 an original thinker ; he was essentially a student of 

 books, an immensely industrious but not always judicious 

 compiler. Often his selections from other works prove 

 that he failed to appreciate the relative importance of the 

 different subjects to which he made reference. His 

 knowledge of the Greek language appears, too, to have 

 been defective, for he gives at times the wrong Latin 

 names to objects described by his Greek authorities. 

 To these defects must be added his marvellous readiness 

 to believe any statement, provided only that it was 

 uncommon; while, on the other hand, he showed an 

 indefensible scepticism in regard to what was really 

 deserving of attention. The chief value of his work 

 consists in the historical and chronological notes of the 

 progress of some of the subjects of which he treats 

 fragments of writings which would otherwise be lost to 

 us. Pliny was killed in the destruction of Pompeii, 

 A.D. 79. 



Claudius Galenus was born at Pergamus, in Asia Minor, 

 in the hundred and thirty-first year of the Christian era. 

 Few writers ever exercised for so long a time such an 

 undisputed sway over the opinions of mankind as did 



