496 HISTORY OF CONCHOLOGY. 



whether recorded by grave philosopher, or sung or feigned 

 by poet or traveller, finds a place without any nicety as to 

 its probability or conformity to the organization of the ani- 

 mals. On the contrary, there is evidently a strong predi- 

 lection in their worthy authors to retail and believe every 

 tale of instinct or use which might raise the object, however 

 low and loathly, in our estimation, a greater love of the 

 marvels of Pliny, than of the sobrieties of Aristotle. Still, 

 with all their faults, the reader will find them not void of 

 novelty, either in philosophical remark, or in the record of 

 new creatures ; and the plan adopted by them of giving 

 figures of the species, was a most important step towards 

 facilitating the progress of the science.* To look for any- 

 thing that deserves the name of System in their works, 

 appears next to absurd ; they evidently had not yet felt its 

 want, and had no distinct idea of the necessity or utility of 

 any beyond what gave a convenient heading to their chap- 

 ters. What little they do give us of arrangement, may be 

 said to be more or less literally borrowed from Aristotle. 



Fabius Columna, whose works were published even prior 

 to those of Aldrovandus, was a naturalist apparently of 

 superior ability, for he had greater self-reliance, and did look 

 at what nature presented to him, without the use of the re- 

 fractive medium of ancient authority. The illegitimate 

 cadet of a noble Neapolitan family, he assumed for his 

 motto " his destituta fortior," covertly alluding to the ad- 

 vantages which the accident of his birth lost and gave him. 

 He was born in 1567, and died in 1650. Educated to the 

 practice of medicine, his studies were turned in a peculiar 

 direction, by his search after a specific for epilepsy, a dis- 

 ease with which, from his youth, he had been afflicted. He 

 vainly dreamed that could he discover the plant which ancient 

 authorities vaunted as remedial of his cruel malady, he had 

 made the discovery of its cure ; and led on by this delusive 

 hope, he studied the species mentioned by his authorities, 

 with critical care, and in vain. 



He carried the same critical spirit into his zoological 



* " Without the tool that presents figures to the eye, not the press itself 

 could have diffused an adequate knowledge either of anatomy or of natural 

 history." " The Dyalogus creaturarum moralizatus, of which the first edition 

 was published at Gouda, 1480, seems to be nearly, if not altogether, the 

 earliest of these" books adorned and illustrated with woodcuts. Hallam's 

 Introd. to the Literature of Europe, i. 260. Aristotle illustrated his 

 writings with designs, but none of these have been preserved. One of them 

 is said to have represented the Sepia in the act of laying its eggs. Cuv. 

 Hist. Sc. Nat. i. 132 : Sprengel, Hist, de la Med. i. 392. 



