XVI INTRODUCTION. 



that he or his contemporaries or both were 

 very credulous, and that the science of ex- 

 perimental philosophy was scarcely cultivated 

 among them. 



After the compilation of Pliny's vast Com- 

 pendium, nearly fourteen hundred years rolled 

 away without anything being done for ento- 

 mology or for natural history in general. 

 THE ARABIANS, who alone preserved a glim- 

 mer of science during those dark ages that 

 succeeded the fall of the Roman empire, 

 cultivated natural history only as a branch of 

 medicine, and from their writings little can 

 be gleaned in furtherance of our present 

 object. 



On the revival of learning in the fifteenth 

 century, and after the discovery of the art of 

 printing, various editions were published of 

 the works on natural history, written by the fa- 

 thers of that science. SIR EDWARD WOTTON, 

 CONRADE GESNER,and others, produced con- 

 jointly a work on insects, the manuscripts of 

 which came into the possession of DR. THOMAS 

 PENRY, an eminent physician and botanist 

 in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. After de- 

 voting fifteen years to the improvement of the 



