66 ‘THE AUSTRALIAN NATURALIST. 
learning, false observations of natural phenomena, and the Serip- 
tures. He quotes Pythagoras, Aristotle, Pliny, Seneca, Plutarch, 
Josephus, Tycho, Kepler, Galileo, all as of equal authority. To 
them he adds citations from schoolmen Renascence physicists, Dr. 
Gilbert, both Bacons, and Talmudists. An observation recorded by 
_ Mendoza, or by Fracastorius, by Vallesius, or Fromondus, is to 
Wilkins as conclusive as anything seen by Galileo’s telescope, which, 
_by the way, he does not cite. Lastly, he feels bound by the words 
of Scripture, and he labours to show by a crowd of theological wit- 
nesses that Revelation nowhere compels us to believe our earth to 
be the only world, nor that the sun goes round the earth. The Bible, 
in fact, seems far more repressive to Free Thought, even than Pope, 
Council, and Inquisition. The moral of afl this is to show how the 
progress of science, even of mechanical invention and of human civi- 
> 2 
lisation, depends on the solution of ultimate problems of philosophy 
_ and religion.’’ 
Amongst the greater number of people through many 
centuries there persisted a belief in fairies and simi- 
lar supernatural beings. Destructive or unusual occur- 
-rences in nature were often ascribed to them. 
‘The powers of the nymphs and fairies of the Midsum- 
mer Night’s Dream are not the creation of Shakespeare, 
but the reflection of a common belief amongst a great pro- 
portion of his contemporaries. Titania explains the drowned 
fields and rotting corn and other unusual misfortunes of 
the season by Oberon’s jealousy. And a similar belief was 
~ common to all Europe. But the 18th century saw a great 
advance in the study of Natural History. The great sys- 
‘tematists, such as Linnaeus (1707-1789), were gathering 
and organising knowledge for the greater Naturalists of 
the next century. Gilbert White of Selborne (1720-1793), 
has always been a landmark in Natural History. ‘He is the 
highest type of his time, remote from the great world, and, 
with the exception of a few correspondents, cut off from 
‘other workers’in the same field. His work is connected 
with the village of Selborne, and he has not yet reached 
far beyond the particular knowledge of the life of Nature 
about him. No disturbing questions of a philosophical 
character arise in his mind as the result of his investi- 
gations. He is interested in the migration of birds, but 
‘seriously doubts its general truth, though it may be par- 
tially correct. He is troubled by the inaccurate statements 
of observers, and is not quite sure that swallows remain. 
- torpid in winter. Some were of opinion that they con- 
‘globulated below the waters of streams in that season. 
