116 ULYSSES ALDROVANDI. 



Buffon in tliinking, tliat were the useless parts re- 

 moved, they would be reduced to a tenth of their 

 bulk. Moreover^ the plan and matter are to a 

 great extent borrowed from Gesner ; but in all ages 

 writers on natural history have been so much ad- 

 dicted to the practice of borrowing, that Aldrovandi 

 is hardly to be censured on this account. 



Some portions of his museum have successfully 

 struggled with the destructive energies of time, and 

 are still to be seen in the collection of the Institute 

 of Bologna. His manuscripts, of which there is an 

 immense mass, are preserved in the public library of 

 the same city; and the drawings from which the 

 engravings for his work were taken were carried, 

 at the time of the Revolution, to the Museum of 

 Natural History at Paris. 



Such were the dawnings of zoological science after 

 the revival of learning in Europe. The authors of 

 those times, it is manifest, looked less to nature than 

 to the writings of Aristotle, Pliny, and their other 

 predecessors; so that in their works we find little more 

 than a repetition of what had been previously said. 

 Their descriptions are rude, frequently incorrect, and 

 in few cases characteristic. They had no idea of dis- 

 posing the objects of which they treated in a man- 

 ner resembling that to which we have been accus- 

 tomed since the period of Ray and Linnaeus. The 

 alphabetical arrangement was followed by some, 

 while others possessed a rude notion of the affinity 

 of species; but although attempts were made to 

 separate the animal creation into classic groups, yet 

 from the daj^s of Aristotle to those of Swammer- 

 dam, Ray, and Reaumur, we find no traces of the 

 anatomical knowledge necessary for the accomplish- 



