Thomas Moffett, Thomas Penny 221 



never be an atheist," was one of his recorded sayings. 

 Dealing with the matter broadly, I think we may endorse the 

 statement of Mr. Foster Watson : " It is noteworthy, that 

 in both botany and zoology the main advances were made 

 by professed physicians," and we must not forget that Eliza- 

 bethan botany was more advanced than Elizabethan zoology. 



Something, however, was learned from husbandry and 

 field sport. "Let the student," says Vives in the above - 

 quoted passage, " have recourse, for instance, to gardeners, 

 husbandmen, shepherds, and hunters," and in " De rebus 

 rusticis " he says : " Let the boy read Cato, Varro, Columella, 

 Palladius." " Vitruvius is important for naming with the 

 greatest purity and accuracy most objects of the country." 

 Virgil with his marvellous account of apiculture and other 

 agricultural pursuits was much read during this period. 



The gentlefolk also in Queen Elizabeth's time were much 

 interested in the study of heraldry, for, indeed, it was a 

 very gentlemanly pursuit. Gerard Legh's " Accedens of 

 Armory " (1562) and John Guillim's " Display of Heraldry " 

 (1610) included descriptions of creatures which enabled the 

 owners of animal crests and supporters to appreciate the 

 nature of what they bore and of what supported them. 



In Elizabethan times, although a knowledge of physio- 

 logy and human anatomy was beginning to emerge; such 

 objects as comparative anatomy, morphology, and embryo- 

 logy were non-existent. In dealing with the animal king- 

 dom, the first need of the earlier writers on zoology was to 

 make some sort of classification, and even in the later Tudor 

 times such attempts at classification rested almost wholly on 

 external characteristics. These arid catalogues of animals 

 were usually lightened by the addition of notes on their 

 habits often of the quaintest and most bizarre description 

 and by short accounts of such medical properties as the 

 fantastic pharmacy of the sixteenth century attributed to 

 various beasts. 



With one or two exceptions astronomy on the physical 

 side, human anatomy on the biological the reawakening 

 in science lagged a century or more behind the renascence 

 in literature and in art. What the leaders of thought and 

 of practice in the arts of writing, of painting and of sculpture 



