MOUFET 85 



bridge, and afterwards abroad. He practised in Ipswich 

 and in London, and was patronised by the Earl of 

 Pembroke, who made him member of parliament for 

 Wilton in 1597. Gesner, who was overpowered by the 

 impossible task of describing animals and plants of 

 every kind, had obtained the assistance of Thomas 

 Penny, who laboured to complete a sketch of a History 

 of Insects made by Wotton. At Penny's death, his 

 notes, untidy and full of erasures, were handed over to 

 Moufet, who in turn died before the work was published. 

 Moufet's manuscript lay long in the possession of Sir 

 Theodore Mayerne, who at last produced in 1634 the 

 belated treatise. Mayerne was a French protestant, 

 who had been physician to Henry IV., king of France. 

 He had incurred the hatred of the Galenists by using 

 chemical drugs, among others calomel. These troubles 

 probably drove him to England, where he became 

 physician to James I. and afterwards to Charles I. 



Though Wotton, Gesner, Penny and Mayerne all 

 contributed to the book, it possesses little value. The 

 structure, life-histories and classification of insects are 

 handled without real knowledge, and the authors trusted 

 mainly to what they could find in the books of the 

 learned. The coarse woodcuts are mostly unnamed. 

 Martin Lister^ in a letter to Ray, criticises the con- 

 fused arrangement of Moufet's matter, and still more 

 severely his transference of information from Aldrovandi, 

 who is not once named. 



Those who care to occupy themselves with Moufet's 

 literary gifts will find a favourable specimen in the 

 thirteenth chapter of the second book, where he dis- 

 courses upon the virtues of spiders. Of his inability to 

 distinguish between a true and a false narrative one 



^ Correspondence of John Bay, 1848, p. 12. 



