SCIENTIFIC NEWS. ' 383 



SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



1 AM informed by Dr. Forbes of Edinbiireh, that he is New translation 

 engaged on a translation of Pliny's Natural History, which °ural History," 

 is to be accompanied with such notes and illustrations, as 

 may be necessary to elucidate the context, a Life of the 

 Author, and a Preliminary Dissertation on the Origin of 

 Natural History, and on its progress and gradual improve- 

 ment, from its infancy to its present state of comparative 

 maturity. 



He observes, that the thirty-seven books of the Natural 

 History of Caius Plinius Secundus may with propriety be 

 regarded as the Encydopcedia of antiquity, since its very 

 inquisitive and industrious author has collected all the facts 

 recorded by every Greek and Roman writer previous to his 

 own time, concerning the animal, the vegetable, and the 

 toineral kingdoms, and detailed in a clear and luminous 

 arrangement all that the accumulated experience of past 

 ages had ascertained, relative to the nature of animals and 

 vegetables, to meterology, astronomy^ botany, medicine, 

 chemistry, &c. Pliny's work may be divided into three 

 parts, geography, natural history, and materia medico. 

 Of his geographical inquiries his strictures on the interior 

 parts of Africa are perhaps the most important. He de- 

 rived the sources of his information on this subject from 

 the Carthaginians ; and from what he hai recorded respect- 

 ing the natives and productions of those regions, it is evi- 

 dent, that the ancients were much better acquainted than 

 the moderns are with this quarter of the globe, which from 

 recent events, and from the consequences likely to arise 

 from a great act of national justice, deservedly excites in 

 this country no small share of public interest. The mate^ 

 ria medica exclusively occupies fifteen books of the Hi^toria 

 Naturalis, and constitutes a very curious and instructive 

 department of the author's investigations. It cannot be 

 denied, that Pliny discovers his ignorance in particular 

 points, and that he has recorded with solemn gravity many 



absurd 



