PLINY THE ELDER. 83 



cupy their station by the side of the elephant and 

 lion. However^ all is not false even in those arti- 

 cles which are most replete with falsehoods. We 

 can sometimes come at the truths which have given 

 rise to them^ by recollecting that they are extracts 

 from travellers, and supposing that the ignorance 

 of the ancient tourists, and their love of the mar- 

 vellous, betrayed them into the same exaggerations, 

 and dictated the same vague and superficial descrip- 

 tions, with wliich we are shocked in so many of 

 their modern successors. It may likewise be said of 

 Pliny, that he does not always give the true sense of 

 the authors whom he translates, especially when treat- 

 ing of the designation of species. Although we have 

 now very few means of judging with certainty re- 

 specting errors of this kind, it is easy to prove, that 

 on several occasions he has substituted for the Greek 

 word which denoted a particular animal in Aristotle, 

 a Latin word which belongs to another species. It 

 is true that one of the great difficulties experienced 

 by the ancients was that of fixing a nomenclature ; 

 and the defects of their systems are more percep- 

 tible in Pliny than in any other writer. The 

 descriptions, or rather the imperfect indications, 

 wliich he gives, are almost always insufficient for 

 recognising the species, when tradition has not pre- 

 served the names ; and there is even a very great 

 number, of which he mentions the names without 

 joining to them any character, or affording any 

 means by which they may be distinguished. Could 

 there be any longer a doubt as to the advantages of 

 the systems invented by the moderns, it would be 

 dissipated by finding that all that the ancients have 

 said of the virtues of their plants is lost to us, from 



