amounting to upwards of three thousand two hundred pounds sterling; an
enormous sum for the copyright of a book before the invention of
printing! But the only surviving work of this voluminous author is his
Natural History, in thirty-seven books, compiled from the various writers
who had treated of that extensive and interesting subject.

If we estimate this great work either by the authenticity of the
information which it contains, or its utility in promoting the
advancement of arts and sciences, we should not consider it as an object
of any extraordinary encomiums; but when we view it as a literary
monument, which displays the whole knowledge of the ancients, relative to
Natural History, collected during a period of about seven hundred years,
from the time of Thales the Milesian, it has a just claim to the
attention of every speculative enquirer. It is not surprising, that the
progress of the human mind, which, in moral science, after the first dawn
of enquiry, was rapid both amongst the Greeks and Romans, should be slow
in the improvement of such branches of knowledge as depended entirely on
observation and facts, which were peculiarly difficult of attainment.
Natural knowledge can only be brought to perfection by the prosecution of
enquiries in different climates, and by a communication of discoveries
amongst those by whom it is cultivated. But neither could enquiries be
prosecuted, nor discoveries communicated, with success, while the greater
part of the world was involved in barbarism, while navigation was slow
and limited, and the art of printing unknown. The consideration of these
circumstances will afford sufficient apology for the imperfect state in
which natural science existed amongst the ancients. But we proceed to
give an abstract of their extent, as they appear in the compilation of
Pliny.

This work is divided into thirty-seven books; the first of which contains