The ape, the monkey, and baboon did meet
A breaking of their fast in Friday Street.
British Bibliographer, i. 342.
[1381] The Tapir is mentioned by Peter Martyr, the rest in Hernando.
Belon. 27. Less acquainted with books but with better opportunities of observing nature than Gesner, his contemporary Belon made greater accessions to zoology. Besides, his excellent travels in the Levant and Egypt, we have from him a history of fishes in Latin, printed in 1553, and translated by the author into French, with alterations and additions; and one of birds, published in French in 1555, written with great learning, though not without fabulous accounts, as was usual in the earlier period of natural history. Belon was perhaps the first, at least in modern times, who had glimpses of a great typical conformity in nature. In one of his works he places the skeletons of a man and a bird in apposition, in order to display their essential analogy. He introduced also many exotic plants into France. Every one knows, says a writer of the last century, that our gardens owe all their beauty to Belon.[1382] The same writer has satisfactorily cleared this eminent naturalist from the charge of plagiarism, to which credit had been hastily given.[1383] Belon may on the whole be placed by the side of Gesner.
[1382] Liron, Singularités Historiques, i. 456.
[1383] Id. p. 438. It had been suspected that the manuscripts of Gilles, the author of a compilation from Ælian, who had himself travelled in the east, fell into the hands of Belon who published them as his own. Gesner has been thought to insinuate this; but Liron is of opinion that Belon was not meant by him.
Salviani and Rondelet’s Ichthyology. 28. Salviani published in 1558 a history of fishes (Animalium Aquatilium Historia), with figures well executed, but by no means numerous. He borrows most of his materials from the ancients, and having frequently failed in identifying the species they describe, cannot be read without precaution.[1384] But Rondelet (De Piscibus Marinis, 1554), was far superior as an ichthyologist, in the judgment of Cuvier, to any of his contemporaries, both by the number of fishes he has known, and the accuracy of his figures, which exceed three hundred for fresh-water and marine species. His knowledge of those which inhabit the Mediterranean Sea was so extensive that little has been added since his time. “It is the work,” says the same great authority, “which has supplied almost everything which we find on that subject in Gesner, Aldrovandus, Willoughby, Artedi, and Linnæus; and even Lacepede has been obliged, in many instances, to depend on Rondelet.” The text, however, is far inferior to the figures, and is too much occupied with an attempt to fix the ancient names of the several species.[1385]
[1384] Biogr. Univ. (Cuvier.)
[1385] Biogr. Univ.
Aldrovandus. 29. The very little book of Dr. Caius on British Dogs, published in 1570, the whole of which I believe has been translated by Pennant in his British Zoology, is hardly worth mentioning; nor do I know that zoological literature has anything more to produce till almost the close of the century, when the first and second volumes of Aldrovandus’s vast natural history was published. These, as well as the third, which appeared in 1603, treat of birds; the fourth is on insects; and these alone were given to the world by the laborious author, a professor of natural history at Bologna. After his death in 1605, nine more folio volumes, embracing with various degrees of detail most other parts of natural history, were successively published by different editors. “We can only consider the works of Aldrovandus,” says Cuvier, “as an immense compilation without taste or genius; the very plan and materials being in a great measure borrowed from Gesner; and Buffon has had reason to say that it would be reduced to a tenth part of its bulk by striking out the useless and impertinent matter.”[1386] Buffon, however, which Cuvier might have gone on to say, praises the method of Aldrovandus and his fidelity of description, and even ranks his work above every other natural history.[1387] I am not acquainted with its contents; but according to Linnæus, Aldrovandus, or the editors of his posthumous volumes, added only a very few species of quadrupeds to those mentioned by Gesner, among which are the Zebra, the Jerboa, the Musk Rat of Russia, and the Manis or Scaly Anteater.[1388]
[1386] Id.