BRIEF HISTORY OF THE SCIENCE OF ZOOLOGY 4Gl 



Fig. 414. — Gesner. From Lory, 

 "Biology andits Makers," New 

 York, Henry Holt and Company. 



the great zoological text-hook of 

 the new era, as Phny's was of 

 the Roman era. Gesner's text- 

 book appeared between 1551 and 

 1558 in four huge quarto volumes 

 bound in parchment. He never 

 completed this work, which is 

 not strange, since he l^usied him- 

 self with many other great un- 

 dertakings. He was the first to 

 establish a museum and a l)otani- 

 cal garden. Gesner's work was 

 imitated and extended some 

 years later by Aldrovanch (b. 1522 in Bologna, d. 1605). 

 Such works, which had many successors, characterized the 



encj'clopaedic period. 



But the encycloiDsecUc period 

 was one of original scientific in- 

 vestigation as well as of codifica- 

 tion. The Ijonds of authority 

 which held naturalists to the 

 writings of Aristotle and Galen 

 were at last broken by Vesalius 

 (b. 1512, d. 1564). Born into a 

 noted family of physicians, Vesa- 

 lius early showed a strong taste 

 for anatomy, and was well edu- 

 cated at different universities. 

 Fig. 415. — Andreas Vesalius. He applied himself to careful per- 

 From Foster "Lectures on the ggnal dissections of the human 



History oi rnysiology, by per- 



Diissiou. body, and in 1543 published his 



