254 STUDIES IN INSECT LIFE, ETC. 



of course common. The bears at Berne are a 

 survival of these Tudor times, and illustrate the 

 old-world habit of immuring bears in pits, a 

 habitat alien to their nature and affording man 

 but one aspect of their external bodily structure. 

 Monstrosities, sometimes manufactured, as the 

 mermaid is to this day fabricated in the East, 

 by joining a monkey's head and body to a fish's 

 tail, always excited interest and aroused the 

 speculation of the uninformed. 



Man is a collecting animal, and in the Middle 

 Ages the monasteries and the churches were often 

 the repositories of the various objects of nature 

 and art amassed by the traveller and the con- 

 noisseur. The opening up of the sea route to the 

 East, the discovery of America, and the conse- 

 quent foundation of " factories " both in the East 

 and in the West, combined with missions to 

 " ye heathern," led to considerable accumulations 

 of natural history objects, and to the formation 

 of museums. But for the most part the collec- 

 tions remained in the house of the collector and 

 were largely made up of archaeological and ethno- 

 logical specimens. Before Shakespeare's date such 

 collections were made on the Continent by Ulisse 

 Aldrovandi (1527-1605), " omnis fere eruditionis 



