ULYSSES ALDROVANDI. 115 



his life. This, howev^er^ is mere conjecture ; and 

 there is too much reason to fear that, like many 

 other eminent persons, he was abandoned to struggle 

 with misfortune, and not advanced to honour and 

 estimation until after his career was finished, when 

 they could be of no use to him. 



The works of Aldrovandi form thirteen folio vo- 

 lumes. Of these, four only were published by him- 

 self; namely, three on birds and one on insects. Im- 

 mediately after his death, in 1606, his widow put 

 forth a volume on the other white-blooded animals, 

 including testacea and crabs. Cornelius Uterverius, 

 a native of Delft, and his successor in the institute 

 of Bologna, revised the work on fishes and whales, 

 which appeared in 1613, as well as that on the 

 quadrupeds with solid hoofs, published in 1616. 

 In 1621, the History of the Quadrupeds with split 

 Hoofs was edited by Thomas Dempster, a Scottish 

 gentleman, who was also a professor at Bologna. 

 The other treatises, on the viviparous and oviparous 

 digitate quadrupeds, on serpents, monsters, and mi- 

 nerals, were prepared for the press by Bartholomew 

 Ambrosinus, another of his successors, and that on 

 trees by Ovid Montalbanus. These works under- 

 went a second impression at Bologna, and some of 

 them were subsequently printed at Frankfort. It 

 is difficult to procure a uniform edition^ and some 

 of the tracts are much rarer than others. 



Aldrovandi was certainly one of the most zeal- 

 ous naturalists of his time ; but, although he added 

 considerably to the stock of information, he can only 

 be considered as a laborious collector of materials. 

 Cuvier pronounces his works " an enormous com- 

 pilation without taste or genius," and agrees with 



