ty did not abate in succeeding times. Indeed, the Natural
History of Pliny is one of the comparatively few bulky writings of
antiquity that the efforts of copyists have preserved to us almost
entire. It is, indeed, a remarkable work and eminently typical of its
time; but its author was an industrious compiler, not a creative genius.
As a monument of industry it has seldom been equalled, and in this
regard it seems the more remarkable inasmuch as Pliny was a practical
man of affairs who occupied most of his life as a soldier fighting the
battles of the empire. He compiled his book in the leisure hours stolen
from sleep, often writing by the light of the camp-fire. Yet he cites
or quotes from about four thousand works, most of which are known to
us only by his references. Doubtless Pliny added much through his own
observations. We know how keen was his desire to investigate, since he
lost his life through attempting to approach the crater of Vesuvius
on the occasion of that memorable eruption which buried the cities of
Herculaneum and Pompeii.

Doubtless the wandering life of the soldier had given Pliny abundant
opportunity for personal observation in his favorite fields of botany
and zoology. But the records of his own observations are so intermingled
with knowledge drawn from books that it is difficult to distinguish
the one from the other. Nor does this greatly matter, for whether as
closet-student or field-naturalist, Pliny's trait of mind is essentially
that of the compiler. He was no philosophical thinker, no generalizer,
no path-maker in science. He lived at the close of a great progressive
epoch of thought; in one of those static periods when numberless
observers piled up an immense mass of details which might advantageously
be sorted into a kind of encyclopaedia. Such an encyclopaedia is the
so-called Natural History of Pliny. It is a vast jumble of more or
less uncritical statements regarding almost every field of contemporary
knowledge. The descriptions of animals and plants predominate, but the
work as a whole would have been immensely improved had the compiler
shown a more critical spirit. As it is, he seems rather disposed to
quote any interesting citation that he comes across in his omnivorous
readings, shielding himself behind an equivocal "it is said," or "so and
so alleges." A single illustration will suffice to show what manner of
thing is thought worthy of repetition.

"It is asserted," he says, "that