LINN-EUS AND NATURAL HISTORY TIL 
accounts of animals mentioned in the Bible and others of a 
purely mythical character. These are made to be symbolical 
of religious beliefs, and are often accompanied by quotations 
of texts and by moral reflections. The phoenix rising from 
its ashes typifies the resurrection of Christ. In reference to 
young lions, the Physiologus says: ‘The lioness giveth birth 
to cubs which remain three days without life. Then cometh 
the lion, breatheth upon them, and bringeth them to life... . 
Thus it is that Jesus Christ during three days was deprived 
of life, but God the Father raised him gloriously.” (Quoted 
from White, p. 35.) Besides forty or fifty common animals, 
the unicorn and the dragon of the Scriptures, and the fabled 
basilisk and phoenix of secular writings are described, and 
morals are drawn from the stories about them. Some of the 
accounts of animals, as the lion, the panther, the serpent, the 
weasel, etc., etc., are so curious that, if space permitted, it 
would be interesting to quote them; but that would keep us 
too long from following the rise of scientific natural history 
from this basis. 
For a long time the religious character of the contempla- 
tions of nature was emphasized and the prevalence of theo- 
logical influence in natural history is shown in various titles, 
as Lesser’s Theology of Insects, Swammerdam’s Biblia 
Nature, Spallanzani’s Tracts, etc. 
The zodlogy of the Physiologus was of a much lower grade 
than any we know about among the ancients, and it is a 
curious fact that progress was made by returning to the 
natural history of fifteen centuries in the past. The transla- 
tion of Aristotle’s writings upon animals, and the disposition 
to read them, mark this advance. When, in the Middle 
Ages, the boundaries of interest began to be extended, it 
came like an entirely new discovery, to find in the writings 
of the ancients a storehouse of philosophic thought and a 
higher grade of learning than that of the period. The 
