HISTORY OF ENTOMOLOGY. 4.27 
it may appear so absurd to speak of these animals as in- 
sects, yet he had perhaps a deeper and more philosophi- 
cal reason for this than we may at first be disposed to 
give him credit for. This would be the case if he se- 
parated these from the other reptiles and placed them 
amongst insects on account of their metamorphoses, mis- 
taking perhaps an analogical character for one of affi- 
nity*. Some of the Annelida, as Filaria and Lumbricus °, 
he also regarded as insects. I cannot gather from his 
desultory pages that he had any notion of a systematical 
arrangement of his Anulosa. 
After the taking of Constantinople by the Turks in 
the middle of the fifteenth century, the light of learning, 
kindled by those of its professors who escaped from that 
ruin, appeared again in the West. The Greek language 
then began to be studied universally; and in consequence 
of the coeval invention of the art of printing, various 
editions of the great works of the ancients were publish- 
ed: amongst the rest, those of the fathers of Natural 
History. From the perusal of those works, the love of 
the sciences of which they treated revived in the West, 
and the attention of scientific men began to direct itself 
to the consideration and study of the works of their 
Creator. In the latter part of that century, a work 
entitled the Book of Nature appeared in the German 
language, in which animals and plants were treated of 
and rudely figured; as they were likewise most misera- 
bly in Cuba’s Ortus Sanztatis, published in 1485. In this 
work insects and Crustacea were described under the 
three different denominations of Animals, Birds, and 
Fishes ; so that but little profit was at first derived from 
« See above, p. 418. > Opera vi. 682—. 
