M THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS 



As a naturalist (I have not read his civil history) 

 Oviedo is not considerable. He does not claim to 

 possess any special gifts, training or experience ; indeed 

 we may say that in his time there was no instance of a 

 man who confined himself to so narrow a department of 

 learning as natural history. He writes merely as one 

 who was well acquainted with tropical America, had 

 observed the things about him, and had noted all that 

 was told him. Pliny and Albertus Magnus were still 

 authorities, while the Elucidarius and the Ortus 

 Sanitatis, though packed with fables, furnished a large 

 part of the natural knowledge of the reading public. 

 But the spirit of enlarged curiosity was abroad, and 

 a,lthough Oviedo shared many beliefs at which we cannot 

 but smile, he had the thirst for knowledge which pro- 

 perly belongs to a contemporary of Copernicus and 

 Kegiomontanus, of Brunfels and Bock, of Leonardo da 

 Vinci and Albert Durer, of Erasmus and Sir Thomas 

 More. Oviedo exhibits the simplicity of Herodotus; 

 Acosta, who comes next before us, possesses the higher 

 quality of thoughtfulness ; exactness we must not expect 

 for another hundred years or more. 



Acosta's Natural and Moral History of the Indies, 

 a concise but interesting sketch of the natural pheno- 

 mena, useful products and native tribes of America, was 

 first published in Latin at Salamanca in 1588. It was 

 so well received that it was quickly translated into 

 Spanish, with large additions. The History, thus recast, 

 was three times reprinted in Spain, and translated into 

 Italian, Dutch, French, German and English.^ 



The author, Joseph de Acosta, was a Jesuit father, who 

 had sailed to Cartagena in 1570, being then about thirty 



1 Grimston's translation of 1605 has been reprinted, with introduction and 

 notes by the Hakluyt Society, 1880. 



