214 Gleanings from the 



Ariftotle and the elder Pliny, but it has abfolutely 

 retrograded. Pliny believes more fables, and 

 recounts with grave face more marvels than did 

 the elder natural hiftorian, while he is not nearly 

 fo difcriminating, and does not exhibit the fame 

 common-fenfe as did his forerunner. The vaft- 

 nefs of his own compilations, and his perpetual 

 induftry in noting any circumftances of intereft 

 connected with natural hiftory, fmothered his 

 judgment. He had neither time to fift facts nor 

 to weigh the authority to be attached to ftate- 

 ments of other authors ; and thefe defects leave his 

 great " Natural Hiftory " a rudis indigeftaque 

 moles, which compares unfavourably with the more 

 exact and painftaking work of Ariftotle. He, 

 on the contrary, muft have ftudied fim practically, 

 fo far as actual ftudy of natural hiftory was poffible 

 in the judgment of his time, and betrays no fmall 

 acquaintance with the clarification of fim, and the 

 differences which mark them off from quadrupeds 

 and birds. Thus he divides them into fim which 

 produce young by eggs, like ordinary fifh, or fifh 

 which produce their young alive fifh which we 

 now know to refemble quadrupeds in poffeffmg 

 warm blood, fuch as whales, dolphins, ra (TfXa^r/, 

 and the like. On their generation he was very 

 well informed. Pliny, on the contrary, in addition 

 to the ftatements of previous writers and of his 

 own coadjutors, might have never feen a fifh fave 

 fuch as appeared at his table. The migrations of 

 fifh, whereby the moft ufeful families are brought 

 at certain feafons annually to our mores tunnies, 



