20 BOOKS OF SECRETS. 



The fourth conversation is somewhat discursive, treats of good and 

 bad fortune, of the influences of the heavenly bodies and of many singular 

 occurrences. 



The fifth conversation is about the lands near and around the North 

 Pole, the variation in the length of the day and night, the inhabitants, the 

 climate, and similar details. 



The last discussion is about the animals that live in the Northern 

 regions, wolves, hares which become white when snow begins, trees that 

 remain green all the year and other curiosities. 



The whole book is an excellent summary. I hope here be truths. 



While these writers are mere compilers of strange stories about Nature, 

 others endeavoured to treat Natural History from a common sense point 

 of view. They could not free themselves altogether from the marvellous, 

 but they tried to keep that element within bounds and to give rational 

 descriptions. 



One of them was Joannes Jonstonus, who wrote a review of the subject 

 under these heads : the heavens, the four elements, meteors, fossils 

 (mineral substances), plants, birds, quadrupeds, bloodless animals (insects), 

 fishes, man. The classification is a cross one, lizards, for instance, are 

 put among quadrupeds, but the attempt at a classification at all, based 

 upon observation of characters, represents a marked advance, and indicates 

 that the old kind of Natural History was passing away. 



Other books that may be noticed in this connection are Robert Lovel's 

 " Panbotanologia," and " Panzooryctologia," the former a treatise on 

 British plants, the latter on animals and minerals. They contain much 

 information, not very critically sifted, with a view specially to pharmacy 

 and therapeutics. Though of little service in that way now, they are not 

 to be despised in connection with the history of medicine and more 

 particularly of medical folk-lore, a branch of the subject of which the 

 significance and value are now fully recognised by historians in Germany. 



