238 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



course of generations, productions, and motions ; whether 

 they be singularities of place and region, or the strange 

 events of time and chance, or the effects of yet unknown 

 proprieties, or the instances of exception to general kinds. 

 It is true, I find a number of books of fabulous experi- 

 ments and secrets, and frivolous impostures for pleasure 

 and strangeness. But a substantial and severe collection 

 of the Heteroclites or Irregulars of nature, well examined 

 and described, I find not ; specially not with due rejection 

 of fables and popular errors : for as things now are, if an 

 untruth in nature be once on foot, what by reason of the 

 neglect of examination and countenance of antiquity, and 

 what by reason of the use of the opinion in similitudes and 

 ornaments of speech, it is never called down. 



The use of this work, honoured with a precedent in 

 Aristotle, is nothing less than to give contentment to the 

 appetite of curious and vain wits, as the manner of 

 Mirabilaries is to do ; but for two reasons, both of great 

 weight ; the one to correct the partiality of axioms and 

 opinions, which are commonly framed only upon common 

 and familiar examples ; the other because from the wonders 

 of nature is the nearest intelligence and passage towards 

 the wonders of art : for it is no more but by following and 

 as it were hounding Nature in her wanderings, to be able 

 to lead her afterwards to the same place again. Neither 

 am I of opinion, in this History of Marvels, that super- 

 stitious narrations of sorceries, witchcrafts, dreams, divina- 

 tions, and the like, where there is an assurance and clear 

 evidence of the fact, be altogether excluded. For it is not 

 yet known in what cases, and how far, effects attributed to 

 superstition do participate of natural causes ; and therefore 

 howsoever the practice of such things is to be condemned, 

 yet from the speculation and consideration of them light 

 may be taken, not only for the discerning of the offences, 

 but for the further disclosing of nature. Neither ought a 

 man to make scruple of entering into these things for 

 inquisition of truth, as your Majesty hath shewed in your 

 own example ; who with the two clear eyes of religion and 

 natural philosophy have looked deeply and wisely into 



