684 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [annO I694. 



Of the natural history of plants he observes, that all ancient descriptions are 

 confused and lanrie, and in number very deficient ; that nothing which they did 

 ' can be compared with Gerhard's, Parkinson's, and Bauhine's Herbals, much less 

 with Mr. Ray's, whcr first drew up a methodical history of all the plants yet 

 known. (Chap. 21.) 



Of insects he observes, that the ancients only meddled with the most remark- 

 able sorts, and there rarely took notice of any but the most conspicuous things ; 

 so that all which Malpighius and Redi say concerning their generation, all 

 ' that is in the writings of Goedartius and Swammerdam concerning the time and 

 nature of their transmutations, may be looked upon as wholly new. And as for 

 histories of larger animals, he pretends that Willoughby's Histories of Birds and 

 Fishes, Ray's Synopsis of Quadrupeds, besides a great many modern discourses 

 upon particular animals, are without comparison better than the histories Of 

 Aristotle, -^liati, or Pliny. (Chap. 22.) ' " 



Afterwards he inserts a discourse written by that most excellent astronomer 

 Mr. Halley, concerning ancient and modern astronomy and optics ; who says 

 that the Egyptian and Chaldean astronomy was little worth in itself, and the 



■ Greek astronomy not much better, if compared with the modern ; that Ptolemy's 

 Hypothesis of the Planetary Motions cannot be set against Kepler's and New- 

 ton's; nor Hipparchus's Catalogue of the Fixed Stars against Tycho Brahe's 

 and Hevelius's ; that the ancients could know but little of optics, since they 

 were so meanly skilled in prespective ; and of dioptrics they were wholly igno- 

 rant, since they had no notion of the properties of refraction, which Descartes 

 first reduced to a science. (Chap. 23.) 



Of music he determines nothing positively, but seems to think that since the 

 grounds of music have always been the same, and that the moderns use more 

 -gradations of half-notes and quarter-notes than the ancients ; and that the sym- 

 .^ phonies of the ancients were only consorts of several voices and instruments to 

 the same part; that modern music, considered as an art, is more perfect than the 

 ancient, which was so much extolled by those that heard it, because it was the 



■ most excellent they had ever heard, and so had a right to the greatest commen- 

 ' dations which they could give it. (Chap. 24.) 



Of medicines also he determines nothing, as to ancient and modern methods 

 of practice, only allows Hippocrates to have been a very great genius, perhaps not 

 equalled by any physician that has come since ; yet considering how much bo- 

 tany, chemistry, and anatomy, have been enlarged, he thinks that modem 

 ' theories of diseases are much more valuable than ancient ones, for want of those 

 helps, could possibly be. (Chap. 25.) 



In speaking of ancient and modern methods of philosophising; he gives the 



