82 PREFACE TO THE 



some of the manuscripts appear to have been in a con- 

 dition which required more judgment in the decipherer 

 than he could perhaps be trusted for (for he compares 

 his labour in extracting the sense to that of reducing 

 mercury to its proper form after its divers shapes and 

 transmutations), yet, with some little allowance on that 

 account, they may be all accepted as authentic. 



Those which he has collected under the respective 

 titles of Physiological and Medical Remains (the Abece- 

 darium Nat urea excepted, which has been printed al- 

 ready) may be considered as loose notes or memoranda 

 connected with the collection of Natural History ; and 

 as there are no means of guessing when they were writ- 

 ten, this seems the fittest place for them. Being merely 

 the remains of the collection from which Raw ley had 

 already selected all that he thought worth publishing, 

 they are of little value, and little need be said about 

 them. 



They are all in Bacon's own English ; except the 

 latter portion of the catalogue of bodies attractive and 

 non-attractive, which appears to have been written by 

 him in Latin. Of the second articles of questions 

 touching minerals a Latin translation by Rawley had 

 been published in the Opuscula Philosophica, which I 

 have not thought it necessary to reprint. The English 

 original from which Tenison took it was one of three 

 (he tells us) ; and the words " This is the clean copy " 

 were written on the back of it in Bacon's own hand. 

 These questions are not, I think, to be classed among 

 the Topica? inquisitionis which Bacon speaks of at the 

 end of the Parasceve; they are not directions for the 

 collection of a natural history of minerals quce sit in 

 ordine ad condendam philosophiam, but merely questions 



