Vlll PREFACE. 



the scattered rays of natural knowledge. The subject 

 was scarcely popular with his countrymen ; and its 

 materials were to he sifted from Greek writers of 

 every school, with a toil and patience which few can 

 duly estimate. The abstracts thus made filled one 

 hundred and sixty closely written volumes, and though 

 the sentiments, or, as we should now term them, the 

 theories, of his authors were not a little discordant, he 

 was well able to separate their matter from their 

 opinions ; and, if sometimes found to have hastily 

 adopted hypotheses for facts, it must be remembered 

 that there existed then no standard for the test of 

 fact that what he had abstracted had the sanction of 

 venerable names and that the period of sound criticism 

 comes in only when vast stores of facts and incidents 

 have been collected ; and Pliny was then the most dili- 

 gent accumulator for a riper age. To him belongs 

 the glory of having harvested the materials for future 

 science. Where attempts at explanation were made, 

 occult causes, in the ignorance of experiment, were 

 the only resource ; and even the great Galileo took 

 refuge in " Nature's abhorrence of a vacuum," for the 

 only solution he could give of an operation which now 

 admits of such rational explanation. Even the errors 

 of these authors are a portion of the " History of 

 Nature," and Pliny's record of them becomes valuable, 

 where otherwise his narrative tempts only to a smile. 



The light of modern science clears away the mist ; 

 yet few, even of ourselves, are privileged, from our 

 higher sphere of advancement, to look down con- 

 temptuously on the erroneous conjectures or super- 

 stitious feelings exemplified in this cyclopaedia of the 

 Roman naturalist : for too many such failings are still 



