n Some of the "Best Books" on Animal Life 353 



The seeds which he had sown were alive, but they did not germi- 

 nate. Men were otherwise occupied, with practical affairs, with 

 the tasks of civilisation alike in peace and war, though some at 

 their leisure played with ideas which they did not verify. There 

 were some exceptions; such as Pliny (23-79 A.D.), a diligent but 

 uncritical collector of facts, and Galen (130-200 a.d.), a medical 

 anatomist, who had the courage to dissect monkeys ; besides the 

 Spanish bishop Isidor in the seventh century, and various Arabian 

 inquirers. It will not be unprofitable to look into the Natural 

 History of Pliny, which has been translated by Bostock and 

 Riley. 



(4) But just as there is in our life a stage — happy are those who 

 prolong it — during which we delight in fables and fairy tales, so 

 there was a long period of mythological zoology. The schoolboy 

 who puts horse-hairs into the brook, and returns after many days 

 to find them eel-like worms', is doing what they did in the Middle 

 Ages. For then fact and fiction were strangely jumbled ; credulity 

 ran riot along the paths of science ; allegorical interpretations and 

 superstitious symbolisms were abundant as the fancies which flit 

 through the minds of dreamers. Scientific inquiry was not en- 

 couraged by the theological mood of the time ; and just as Scotch 

 children cherish The Beasts of the Bible as a pleasantly secular book 

 with a spice of sacredness which makes it legitimate reading on 

 the Sabbath, so many a mediaeval naturalist had to cloak his 

 observations in a semi-theological style. 



In illustration of the mood of the mediaeval naturalists, which 

 is by no means to be carelessly laughed at, read John Ashton's 

 Curious Creatures (Lond., 1890), in which much old lore is retold, 

 often in the words of the original writers. The most characteristic 

 expression of mythical Zoology is a production often called Physio- 

 logus. It is found in about a dozen languages and in many 

 different forms, being in part merely a precipitate of floating 

 traditions. It is partly like a natural history of the beasts of the 

 Bible and prototype of many similar works, partly an account of 

 the habits of animals, the study of which modern zoologists are 

 apt to neglect, partly a collection of natural history fables and 

 anecdotes, partly a treatise on symbolism and suggestive of the 

 poetical side of zoology, partly an account of the medicinal and 

 magical uses of animals. For many centuries it seems to have 

 served as a text-book, a fact in itself an index to the slow progress 

 of the science. Its influence on art and literature has been con- 

 siderable, and it well illustrates the attempt to secure for the 

 unextinguishable interest in living things a sanction and foothold 

 under the patronage of theology. A series of fifty emblems is 

 described, among others the lion which sleeps with its eyes open, 



2 A 



