n their thought and
feeling and in his, were his contemporaries. Constant and extensive as
are his excursions into ancient literature, it is rare for him to make
any reference to writers of his own time.

Yet with all his delight in antiquity and reverence for the great names
of former ages, he is keen in the quest for new discoveries. His
commonplace books abound in ingenious queries and minute observations
regarding physical facts, conceived in the very spirit of our modern
school:--"What is the use of dew-claws in dogs?" He does not instantly
answer, as a schoolboy in this Darwinian day would, "To carry out an
analogy;" but the mere asking of the question sets him ahead of his age.
See too his curious inquiries into the left-footedness of parrots and
left-handedness of certain monkeys and squirrels. The epoch-making
announcement of his fellow-physician Harvey he quickly appreciates at
its true value: "his piece 'De Circul. Sang.,' which discovery I prefer
to that of Columbus." And here again a truly surprising suggestion of
the great results achieved a century and two centuries later by Jenner
and Pasteur--concerning canine madness, "whether it holdeth not better
at second than at first hand, so that if a dog bite a horse, and that
horse a man, the evil proves less considerable." He is the first to
observe and describe that curious product of the decomposition of flesh
known to modern chemists as adipocere.

He is full of eager anticipation of the future. "Join sense unto
reason," he cries, "and experiment unto speculation, and so give life
unto embryon truths and verities yet in their chaos.... What libraries
of new volumes after-times will behold, and in what a new world of
knowledge the eyes of our posterity may be happy, a few ages may
joyfully declare."

But acute and active as our author's perceptions were, they did not
prevent his sharing the then prevalent theory which assigned to the
devil, and to witches who were his ministers, an important part in the
economy of the world. This belief affords so easy a solution of some
problems otherwise puzzling, that this degenerate age may look back with
envy upon those who held it in serene and comfortable possession.

It is to be regretted, however, that the eminent Lord Chief Justice Hale
in 1664, presiding at the trial for witchcraft of two women, should have
called Dr. Browne, apparently as _amicus curiae_, to give his view of
the fits which were supposed to be