636 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXII. No. 565. 



in Bloomsbury. After the removal to South 

 Kensington, the four departmental libraries 

 were considerably supplemented by extensive 

 purchases, for which a special vote was ob- 

 tained from parliament. At the same time a 

 ' general library ' was formed to receive those 

 works the subject-matter of which concerned 

 more than one of the departments. The col- 

 lection has been further increased by many 

 generous and munificent donations and by 

 exchange. 



The library, of course, contains many very 

 early books on natural history; and from these 

 a selection has been made for the purpose of 

 an exhibition intended to illustrate the origin 

 and progress of the study of natural history 

 up to the time of Linnaeus. The exhibition, 

 which occupies two table-cases in the Central 

 Hall, has been arranged by Mr. B. B. Wood- 

 ward, the librarian of the museum. 



We are told that the study of natural his- 

 tory began with the dawn of civilization, and 

 doubtless had its origin, so far as animals and 

 plants were concerned, in the primitive ob- 

 servations of the hunter and of the medicine- 

 man, or priest-physician, while the search for 

 stone, and subsequently for metals, with which 

 to fashion weapons and tools, served to draw 

 attention to the nature and structure of the 

 earth. That the hunters of the stone age 

 were not unobservant of the quadrupeds they 

 pursued is evinced by the carvings and the 

 incised outline representations on bone, as well 

 as by the remarkable pictures, drawn in man- 

 ganese and red ochre, on the chalk walls of 

 the caves in the Dordogne. Examples of the 

 carvings and reproductions of these drawings 

 are shown in the present exhibition. Turn- 

 ing to books proper, we may note a copy of 

 the oldest popular natural history book, the 

 ' Historia Naturalis,' or ' Historia Mundi,' of 

 Pliny the elder, printed by J. de Spira's press 

 at Venice in 1469. This was one of the first, 

 if not the first, of natural history books 

 printed. It presents an epitome of the state 

 of Roman knowledge on the subject, and in 

 this connection it is of interest to note that 

 the number of known plants recorded in it is 

 about 1,000. Mention may also be made of a 



copy of Vincent of Beauvais's ' Bibliotheca 

 Mundi,' compiled by that learned Dominican 

 at the instance of Louis IX. of Trance. This 

 work is not only one of the earliest of encyclo- 

 pedias, but the greatest of the middle ages. 

 It was first printed at Strasburg about 1473. 



The Royal Society is represented by a copy 

 of the first volume of the Philosophical Trans- 

 actions, the earliest publication of any scien- 

 tific society. It was issued in monthly num- 

 bers, of which the first appeared in March, 

 1665, and for the most part deals with physics. 



A special interest attaches to an edition of 

 the ' Stirpium adversaria nova ' of Pena and 

 L-'Obel, printed at Antwerp by Plantin and 

 finished in England in 1570-1. It contains 

 one of the earliest figures of the tobacco plant 

 and an illustration of the method of smoking 

 of the North American aborigines. The pipe 

 is drawn as being somewhat straighter than 

 the Atlantic coast ones generally were. 



The earliest illustrations of the potato plant 

 are seen in a work by Charles de Lecluse, the 

 ' Rariorum Plantarum Tlistoria,' printed at 

 Antwerp in 1601. Lecluse traveled extensively 

 in western Europe making collections, and 

 wrote several books on the botany of the dis- 

 tricts he visited. The figures of the potato 

 plant in the work named are from drawings 

 made by him in 1589 from actual specimens. 

 The plant, we know, was growing in Italy in 

 1586, about which time it was also introduced 

 into England. 



Harvey's doctrine that every living thing 

 came originally from an egg, afterwards ex- 

 pressed by the aphorism,' ' Omne vivum ex 

 ovo,' is symbolized in the engraved title-page 

 of the second edition of his ' Exercitationes 

 de Generatione Animalium,' printed at The 

 Llague in 1680. The original edition was 

 issued in London in 1651. 



Space will allow us only to mention briefly 

 one or two other works in this extremely in- 

 teresting exhibition. Note should be made of 

 John Ray's greatest botanical work, the * His- 

 toria Plantarum,' published at London in 

 1686, containing the description of some 6,900 

 plants in systematic order. The museum copy 

 was the property of Sir Hans Sloane, and has 



