History of Conchology. 241 



institutions, must have been favourable to the growth of such feel- 

 ings, giving the necessary leisure and seclusion, while nature, pre- 

 senting daily her works and phenomena, and her seasonal changes 

 to these recluses, dull but not dead to their influence, insensibly 

 operated and gave direction to the employment of their minds. It 

 may be that these earliest works were not devoted even in part to 

 conchology, but Natural History as one never advances without ad- 

 vantage to every department, and even this minor branch had soon 

 its due share of love and notice. The vast volumes of Albertus 

 Magnus,* Rondeletius, f Gesner^ and Aldrovandus § contain each 

 of them books devoted to it, and although the original facts they 

 disclose are very few in proportion to the mass heaped up in their 

 folios, yet the criticism they have often received as the receptacles 

 of lumber rather than museums of well-arranged records, seems to 

 be unnecessarily harsh and severe. The study of the ancients, and 

 the elucidation of their difficulties, was still a favourite object with 

 men of literature, and when these early naturalists betook them- 

 selves to the writings which had come down to them rather than to 

 the observation of things themselves, they but followed the bent of 

 their compeers, and consulted the taste of their age. Their works 

 are laborious compilations, in which every thing, however remotely 

 connected with the subject in hand, good or bad, true or false, — 

 whether recorded by grave philosopher, or sung or feigned by poet 

 or traveller, — finds a place without any nicety as to its probable- 

 ness, or conformity to the organization of the animals. On the con- 

 trary, there is evidently a strong predilection in their worthy au- 

 thors to retail and believe every tale of instinct or use which might 

 raise the object, however low and loathly, in our estimation, — a 

 greater love of the marvels of Pliny than of the sobrieties of Aris- 

 totle. Still with all their faults, the reader will find them not void 

 of novelty, either in philosophical remark or in the record of new 

 creatures ; and the plan adopted by them of giving figures of the 

 species was a most important step towards facilitating the progress 

 of the science. To look for any thing that deserves the name of 

 System in their works appears next to absurd : they evidently 

 had not yet felt its want, and had no distinct idea of the necessity 

 or utility of any beyond what gave a convenient heading to their 

 chapters. What little they do give us of arrangement may be said 

 to be literally borrowed from Aristotle. 



The writings of this period afford good evidence of a growing and 



* 1495. t 1554. t 1558- § 1-599. 



