SIR TIIOMAS BROWNE AS A NATURALIST. 
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magic and the dark arts, when Aristotle, Pliny, and Galen were 
the greatest authorities, on matters of biology (though this term 
is hardly a hundred years old) as well as on many other matters, 
when, in fact, the intellectual world may be said to have been 
dominated by Greek thought. 
Not that Sir Thomas Browne relied too much on the authority 
of the ancients, as the following sentence from his ‘Vulgar Errors’ 
proves. “ But the mortallest enemy unto knowledge, and that 
which hath .done the greatest execution upon truth, hath been 
a peremptory adhesion unto authority ; and more especially the 
establishing of our belief upon the dictates of antiquity ” ( Wilkin’s 
[Bohn’s] Edit. vol. i. p. 39). This sentence is the commencement 
of a chapter exposing this particular form of error, and shows the 
author to have been a man who brought a strong individuality 
to bear on the discussion of questions which came under his 
observation. 
In trying to think ourselves, as it were, into Sir Thomas Browne’s 
point of view, a very short outline of the history of natural science 
may assist us. Commencing with Aristotle, J. A. Thomson, in his 
‘Science of Life,’ says: — “Aristotle was the lirst to draw that 
useful, but noAV somewhat hazy line between the back-boned and 
the backboneless animals. He knew about 500 different animals.” 
This outline of classification of animals remained practically 
unaltered for eighteen centuries. No improvements of moment 
were made till the work of John Bay appeared in 167G. In 
botany, though a rather long line of botanists preceded Linnaeus, to 
the latter we must look for the first serious and important work on 
the classification of plants. Sir Thomas Browne died before 
Linnaeus was born, and can hardly be said to have been influenced 
by, or even to have come in contact with, much of John Bay’s work, 
though some of Browne’s observations were sent to, and utilized by 
Bay. Therefore, it seems, that in considering Sir Thomas Browne’s 
own observations and studies, we must look on Aristotle as being 
the authority he would most naturally refer to, in matters of 
natural history, though, being a man of wide reading, he did not 
confine his references to Aristotle. We must not, however, overlook 
the fact that the sixteenth century had produced several important 
students of animal and vegetable life, such as Edward Wotton, 
Conrad Gesner, Aldrovand, Kaspar Bauhin, Cesalpino (‘ Science of 
