With the exception of some minute quotations from his grammatical treatise (Lersch, Sprachphilosophie der Alten, vol. i. p. 179, &c.), the only work of Pliny which has been preserved to us, (for it does not appear that any reliance can be placed on the statement that the twenty books on the Germanic wars were seen by Conrad Gesner in Augsburg,) is his By Natural History the ancients understood more than modern writers would usually include in the subject. It embraced astronomy, meteorology, geography, mineralogy, zoology, botany, -- in short, every thing that does not relate to the results of human skill or the products of human faculties. Pliny, however, has not kept within even these extensive limits. He has broken in upon the plan implied by the title of the work, by considerable digressions on human inventions and institutions (book vii.), and on the history of the fine arts (xxxv. -- xxxvii.). Minor digressions on similar topics are also interspersed in various parts of the work, the arrangement of which in other respects exhibits but little scientific discrimination. The younger Pliny fairly enough describes it as opus diffusum, eruditum, nec minus varium quam ipsa Natura (Epist. 3.5). It comprises, as Pliny says in the preface (§ 17), within the compass of thirty-six books, 20,000 matters of importance, drawn from about 2000 volumes, the works of one hundred authors of authority, the greater part of which were not read even by those of professedly literary habits, together with a large number of additional matters not known by the authorities from which he drew. Hardouin has drawn up a catalogue of the authors quoted by Pliny in the first book, or in the body of the work itself, amounting to between 400 and 500. When it is remembered that this work was not the result of the undistracted labour of a life, but written in the hours of leisure secured from active pursuits, interrupted occasionally by ill health (Praef. § 18), and that too by the author of other extensive works, it is, to say the least, a wonderful monument of human industry. Some idea of its nature may be formed from a brief outhine of its contents.

The is divided into 37 books, the first of which consists of a dedicatory epistle to Titus. followed by a table of contents of the other books. It is curious that ancient writers should not more generally have adopted this usage. No Roman writer before Pliny had drawn out such a table, except Valerius Soranus, whose priority in the idea Pliny frankly confesses. (Praef. § 26.) Pliny has also adopted a plan in every way worthy of imitation. After the table of the subject-matter of each book he has appended a list of the authors from whom his materials were derived; an act of honesty rare enough in ancient as well as modern times, and for which in his prefatory epistle (§§ 16, 17) he deservedly takes credit. It may be noticed too, as indicating the pleasure which he took in the quantity of the materials which he accumulated, that he very commonly adds the exact number of facts, accounts, and observations which the book contains.

The second book treats of the mundane system, the sun, moon, planets, fixed stars, comets, meteoric prodigies, the rainbow, clouds, rain, &c., eclipses, the seasons, winds, thunder and lightning, the shape of the earth, changes in its surface, earth-quakes, the seas, rivers, fountains, &c. He makes no attempt to distinguish between astronomy and meteorology, but jumbles both together in utter confusion. The book opens with a profession of the pantheistic creed of the author, who assails the popular mythology with considerable force on the ground of the degrading views of the divine nature which it gives (2.5, or 7). The consideration of the debasing, idle and conflicting superstitious of man-kind draws from him the reflection : Quae singula improvidam mortalitatem involvunt, solum ut inter ista certum sit nihil esse certi, nec miserius quidquam homine, aut superbius. Similar half gloomy, half contemptuous views of human nature, and complaints against the arrangements of Providence, are of frequent occurrence with Pliny. His own appetite for the marvellous however frequently leads him into an excess of credulity scarcely distinguishable from the superstition which he condemns ; though we must at the same time remember that with Pliny Nature is an active and omnipotent deity; and that his love for the marvellous is not mere gaping wonder, but admiration of the astonishing operations of that deity. It is a distinctly recognised maxim with him : Mihi existimare de ea. (H. N. 11.3.) The mundus is in his view divine in its nature, eternal, infinite, though resembling the finite, globular in form, the sun being the animus or mens of the whole, and itself a deity (2.4). He of course supposed this mundus to revolve round an axis in 24 hours. The earth he looked upon as globular, being fashioned into that shape by the perpetual revolution of the mundus round it, and inhabited on all sides. The fact that such is its shape he demonstrates by a variety of pertinent arguments (2.64-71). His ideas with regard to the universe, the nature of the stars, &c., their important relation to us as the origin of human souls (2.26), are in the main very much the same as those which through the influence of the Stoic school became generally prevalent among the Roman philosophers, though on various subordinate points Pliny had some singular notions, whether his own, or copied from authors with whom we are unacquainted, many of them ingenious, still more puerile. The notion which he adopted from the earlier propounders of it, that the germs of the innumerable forms of animals, &c., with which the stars and the universe abound, find their way to the earth, and there frequently become intermingled, producing all kinds of monstrous forms (100.3), accounts for the readiness with which he admits the most fabulous and impossible monsters into his zoology.

The historical and chronological notices with respect to the progress of astronomy which he intersperses are very valuable. Of the beneficial effects of the spread of such knowledge he speaks with generous enthusiasm (2.12). With respect to the changes in the surface of the earth, produced by the depositions of rivers, and the appearance of volcanic islands, he has some valuable and interesting statements (2.83, &c.). These changes, and the other starthing natural phaenomena which present themselves in considerable number and variety in the volcanic region of Italy and Sicily, are to Pliny so many proofs of the manifold divine activity of nature (100.93). Some of the wonders he adduces are however more than apocryphal. On the tides (of the influence of the sun and moon upon which he was well aware), currents and marine springs, he has some remarks which show that his official duties in Spain did not keep him from a careful observation of natural phaenomena (100.97). The wonderful qualities and phaenomena of various waters and fountains (nam nec aquarum natura a miraculis cessat, 100.103), supply him with details, many of them curious and probably true, others requiring the credulity of Pliny for their belief. From the wonders of water he passes to those of fire (100.104, &c.), and then, by a rather curious arrangement, closes the book with some statements regarding the size of the earth and the distance between various points of it.

The four following books (iii.--vi.) are devoted to geography, and this somewhat small space Pliny has still further narrowed by digressions and declamations, so that his notices are confined chiefly to the divisions of the countries and the mere names of the places in them. Of these he has preserved a very large number which would otherwise have been utterly lost, though the lists are considerably swelled by the unconscious repetition of the same names, sometimes several times over, in slightly varied forms. Pliny was himself but a poor geographer, and his erroneous conception of the forms of different countries often materially affected the way in which he made use of the information which he obtained. This part of his work contains a curious medley of the geographical knowledge of different ages, not distinguished and corrected, but pieced together into one whole in the best way that the discordant statements allowed. This discrepancy Pliny sometimes points out, but frequently he omits to do this, and strives to blend the ancient and modern accounts together, so that he often makes the earlier writers speak as though they had used and been familiar with names not in vogue till some time later. (Comp. 4.27, 37.11.) He does not altogether discredit the stories of early times, and speaks of the Rhipaean mountains and the Hyperboreans with at least as much confidence as of some other better authenticated races. His geography of Italy, Greece, and Asia Minor is that of the times of Strabo. For the N. E. portion of Asia we have that of the time of Eratosthenes. For the southern Asiatic coast up to India we have ancient and recent accounts intermingled; for the North of Europe we have the knowledge of his own times, at least as it appears through the somewhat distorted medium of his imperfect notions. With regard to India and Ceylon he has some very recent and trustworthy accounts.

Pliny, like Posidonius, makes the habitable earth to extend much farther from east to west than from north to south. By the western coast of Europe he understands simply Spain and Gaul ; after them begins the northern ocean, the greater part of which he thought had been sailed over, a Roman fleet having reached the Cimbrian peninsula, and ascertained that a vast sea stretches thence to Scythia. He seems to have imagined that the northern coast of Europe ran pretty evenly east and west, with the exception of the break occasioned by the Cimbrian Chersonesus (4.13, &c.). Beyond Germany, he says, immense islands had been discovered, Scandinavia, Eningia, &c. He also believed the northern coast of the earth to have been explored from the east as far as the Caspian sea (which he regarded as an inlet of the northern ocean) in the time of Seleucus and Antiochus. More than one voyage had also been made between Spain and Arabia (2.67, 68). He evidently considered India the most eastern country of the world (6.17). The third and fourth books are devoted to Europe, the countries of which he takes up in a somewhat curious order. He begins with Spain, specifying its provinces and conventus, and giving lists of the towns, the position of some of which he defines, while the greater number are merely enumerated in alphabetical order; mentioning the principal rivers, and noting the towns upon them. He gives a few notices of the inhabitants of the different provinces, but no clear or comprehensive account of the population of the country generally, or any intelligible views even of its physical characteristics. After a similar account of Gallia Narbonensis, Pliny proceeds to Italy. His account of this country is, on the whole, the best of the kind that he has given. Following the division of Augustus, he enumerates the different provinces, going round the coast. The extent of coast line was of course favourable for defining the positions of places situated on or near it. Where the coast or river does not give him a convenient method of defining the position of places, he simply enumerates them, usually in alphabetical order. He has been at considerable pains to specify a number of distances between mouths of rivers, headlands, and other salient or important points, but his numbers can scarcely ever be relied on. Many are egregiously wrong. This may be partly the fault of copyists, but there can be little doubt that it is mainly the fault of Pliny himself, from his misunderstanding the data of the authors from whom he copied. In connection with the more important sections of Italy he enumerates in order the races which successively inhabited them, and where the occasion presents itself mentions not only the towns which existed in his own time, but those which had been destroyed. The Tiberis and Padus, especially the latter, he describes with considerable care. After the provinces on the western coast of Italy, he takes the islands between Spain and Italy, and then returns to the mainland.

Leaving Italy he proceeds to the provinces on the north and east of the Adriatic sea, and those south of the Danube--Liburnia, Dalmatia, Noricum, Pannonia, Moesia; and in the fourth book takes up the Grecian peninsula. His account of this is a good example of his carelessness, indistinctness, and confusion as a geographer. After the provinces on the western side of northern Greece (Epeirus, Acarnania, &c.), he takes the Peloponnesus, and then comes back to Attica, Boeotia, and Thessaly. His account excludes the Peloponnesus from Hellas or Graecia, which begins from the isthmus, the first country in it being Attica, in which he includes Megaris (4.7). His notices are of the most meagre description possible, consisting of hardly anything but lists of names. All that he says of Attica does not occupy twenty lines. After Thessaly come Macedonia, Thrace, the islands round Greece, the Pontus, Scythia, and the northern parts of Europe. Of the existence of the Hyperboreans he thinks it impossible to doubt, as so many authors affirmed that they used to send offerings to Apollo at Delos (4.12). Nor does he express any distrust when recounting the stories of races who fed upon horses' hoofs, or of tribes whose ears were large enough to serve as a covering for their bodies. His account of Britain, which he makes he over against Germany, Gaul, and Spain, is very meagre. From Britain he proceeds to Gallia, in his account of which he mixes up Caesar's division according to races with the division according to provinces (Ukert, Geographie der Griechen und Römer, 2.2. p. 238), and so, not unnaturally, is indistinct and contradictory. After Gallia he comes back to the northern and western parts of Spain and Lusitania.

This sketch will give the reader an idea of the clumsy manner in which Pliny treats geography. It is unnecessary to follow him in detail through the rest of this part of his work. It is carried on in much the same style. When treating of Africa he mentions (apparently without disbelief) the monstrous races in the south, some without articulate language, others with no heads, having mouths and eyes in their breasts. He accedes to the opinion of king Juba, that the Nile rises in a mountain of Mauritania, and that its inundations are due to the Etesian winds, which either force the current back upon the land, or carry vast quantities of clouds to Aethiopia, the rain from which swells the river. Of the races to the north and east of the Pontus and on the Tanais he has preserved a very large number of names. With regard to India he has some accounts which show that amid the conflicting, and what even Pliny calls incredible statements of different writers, a good deal of accurate information had reached the Romans. It is to be regretted that Pliny was deterred by the nature of these accounts from giving us more of them. It would have been interesting to know what Greeks who had resided at the courts of Indian kings (6.17) told their countrymen. We could have spared for that purpose most of the rough and inaccurate statements of distances which he has taken the trouble to put in. Some intercourse which had taken place with the king of Taprobane in the reign of the emperor Claudius enables Pliny to give a somewhat circumstantial account of the island and people. Though of very small value as a systematic work, the books on geography are still valuable on account of the extensive collection of ancient names which they contain, as well as a variety of incidental facts which have been preserved out of the valuable sources to which Pliny had access.

The five following books (vii.--xi.) are devoted to zoology. The seventh book treats of man, and opens with a preface, in which Pliny indulges his querulous dissatisfaction with the lot of man, his helpless and unhappy condition when brought into the world, and the pains and vices to which he is subject. After bespeaking some measure of belief for the marvellous accounts that he will have to give, and suggesting that what appears incredible should be regarded in its connection with a great whole (naturae vero rerum vis alque majestas in omnibus momentis fide caret, siquis modo partes ejus ac non totam complectatur animo), he enumerates a number of the most astonishing and curious races reported to exist upon the earth :--cannibals, men with their feet turned backwards; the Psylli, whose bodies produce a secretion which is deadly to serpents; tribes of Androgyni; races of enchanters ; the Sciapodae, whose feet are so large, that when the sun's heat is very strong they he on their backs and turn their feet upwards to shade themselves; the Astomi, who live entirely upon the scents of fruits and flowers; and various others almost equally singular. Haec, he remarks, atque talia ex hominum genere ludibria sibi, nobis miracula, ingeniosa fecit natura. He then proceeds to a variety of curious accounts respecting the generation and birth of children, or of monsters in their place. An instance of a change of sex he affirms to have come within his own knowledge (7.4). The dentition, size, and growth of children, examples of an extraordinary precocity, and remarkable bodily strength, swiftness, and keenness of sight and hearing, furnish him with some singular details. He then brings forward a variety of examples (chiefly of Romans) of persons distinguished for remarkable mental powers, moral greatness, courage, wisdom, &c., preserving some interesting anecdotes respecting the persons adduced. Then follow some notices of those most distinguished in the sciences and arts, and of persons remarkable for their honours or good fortune, in connection with which he does not forget to point out how the most prosperous condition is frequently marred by adverse circumstances. He then mentions a number of instances of great longevity. Men's liability to disease draws from him some pettish remarks, and even some instances which he mentions of resuscitation from apparent death only lead to the observation : haec est conditio mortalium; ad has et ejusmodi occasiones fortunae gignimur, uti de homine ne morti quidem debeat cerdi (7.52). Sudden death he looks upon as an especially remarkable phaenomenon, and at the same time the happiest thing that can happen to a man. The idea of a future existence of the soul he treats as ridiculous, and as spoiling the greatest blessing of nature--death (100.55 or 56). It must have been in some peculiar sense, then, that he believed in apparitions after death (100.52 or 53). The remainder of the book is occupied with a digression on the most remarkable inventions of men, and the authors of them. He remarks that the first thing in which men agreed by tacit consent was the use of the alphabet of the Ionians; the second the employment of barbers; the third marking the hours.

The eighth book is occupied with an account of terrestrial animals. They are not enumerated in any systematic manner. There is, indeed, some approximation to an arrangement according to size, the elephant being the first in the list and the dormouse the last, but mammalia and reptiles, quadrupeds, serpents, and snails, are jumbled up together. For trustworthy information regarding the habits and organisation of animals the reader will commonly look in vain : a good part of almost every article is erroneous, false, or fabulous. Pliny's account is, of course, filled with all the most extraordinary stories that he had met with, illustrating the habits or instinct of the different animals. The elephant he even believes to be a moral and religious animal, and to worship the sun and moon (8.1). His entertaining account of the elephant and the lion will give somewhat favourable samples of the style in which he discusses natural history (8.1-11, 16). The reader of the seventh book will be prepared to find in the eighth the most extraordinary and impossible creatures figuring by the side of the lion and the horse. Thus we have the achlis, without joints in its legs (100.16); winged horses armed with horns (100.30); the mantichora, with a triple row of teeth, the face and ears of a man, the body of a lion, and a tail which pierces like that of a scorpion (ib.); the monoceros, with the body of a horse, the head of a stag, the feet of an elephant, the tail of a boar, and a black horn on its forehead two cubits long (100.31); the catoblepas, whose eves are instantly fatal to any man who meets their glance (100.32); and the basilisk, possessed of powers equally remarkable (100.33). Pliny certainly was not the man to throw out the taunt : mirum est quo procedat Graeca credulitas (8.22 or 34). He cites Ctesias with as much confidence as Aristotle; and it is not unlikely that in some instances he has transformed the symbolical animals sculptured at Persepolis into real natural productions. With his usual proneness to ramble off into digressions, his account of the sheep furnishes him with an opportunity for giving a variety of details regarding different kinds of clothing, and the novelties or improvements introduced in it (8.48 or 73).

In the ninth book he proceeds to the different races inhabiting the water, in which element he believes that even more extraordinary animals are produced than on the earth, the seeds and germs of living creatures being more intermingled by the agency of the winds and waves, so that he assents to the common opinion that there is nothing produced in any other part of nature which is not found in the sea, while the latter has many things peculiar to itself. Thus he finds no difficulty in believing that a live Triton, of the commonly received form, and a Nereid, had been seen and heard on the coast of Spain in the reign of Tiberius, and that a great number of dead Nereids had been found on the beach in the reign of Augustus, to say nothing of sea-elephants and sea-goats. The story of Arion and the dolphin he thinks amply confirmed by numerous undoubted instances of the attachment shown by dolphins for men, and especially boys. It seems that these creatures are remarkably apt at answering to the name Simon, which they prefer to any other (100.8). Pliny, however, rightly terms whales and dolphins beluae, not pisces, though the only classification of marine animals is one according to their integuments (9.12 or 14, 13 or 15). His account of the ordinary habits of the whale is tolerably accurate; and indeed, generally speaking, the ninth book exhibits much less of the marvellous and exaggerated than some of the others. He recognises seventy-four different kinds of fishes, with thirty of Crustacea (14 or 16). The eagerness with which pearls, purple dye, and shell-fish are sought for excites Pliny to vehement objurgation of the luxury and rapacity of the age (100.34). On the supposed origin of pearls, and the mode of extracting the purple dye, he enters at considerable length (100.34-41). Indeed, as he sarcastically remarks : abunde tractate est ratio qua se virorum juxta feminarumque forma credit amplissimam fieri.

The tenth book is devoted to an account of birds, beginning with the largest--the ostrich. As to the phoenix even Pliny is sceptical; but he has some curious statements about eagles, and several other birds. The leading distinction which he recognises among birds is that depending on the form of the feet (10.11 or 13). Those, also, which have not talons but toes, are subdivided into oscines and alites, the former being distinguished by their note, the latter by their different sizes (100.19 or 22). He notices that those with crooked talons are usually carnivorous; that those which are heavy feed on grain or fruits; those that fly high, on flesh (100.47). The validity of augury he does not seem to question. Though he had found no difficulty in winged horses (8.21), he regards as fabulous winged Pegasi with horses' heads. The substance of the bird when hatched he states to be derived from the white of the egg, the yolk serving as its food (100.53). From his account of eggs he digresses into a general discussion of the phaenomena of generation in animals of all kinds (100.62, &c.), in connection with which he has several most extraordinary statements, as, e. gr., that the spinal marrow of a man may turn into a serpent (100.66), and that mice can generate by licking each other. The generation and fecundity of these little creatures he regards as especially astonishing; and what becomes of them all he cannot think, as they are never picked up dead, or dug up in winter in the fields (100.65). He then proceeds to some statements as to the relative acuteness of the senses in different animals, and other miscellaneous matters. The reciprocal enmities and attachments of different animals are frequently touched upon by him.

The first part of the eleventh book is occupied with an account of insects. The phenomena of the insect kingdom Pliny regards as exhibiting the wonderful operations of nature in even a more surprising manner than the others. He, however, only notices a few of the most common insects. On bees he treats at considerable length. He finds space, however, to mention the pyralis, an insect which is produced and lives in the fire of furnaces, but dies speedily if too long away from the flame (100.36). The remainder of the book (100.37 or 44, &c.) is devoted to the subject of comparative anatomy, or at least something of an approximation to that science. Considerable ingenuity has been shown by those from whom Pliny copies in bringing together a large number of coincidences and differences, though, as might have been expected, there are many errors both in the generalisations and in the particular facts.

Botany, the next division of natural history taken up by Pliny, occupies by far the largest portion of the work. Including the books on medical botany, it occupies sixteen books, eight on general botany (xii.-xix.), and eight more on medicines derived from plants. Pliny's botany is altogether devoid of scientific classification. The twelfth book treats of exotics, especially the spice and scent bearing trees of India, Arabia, and Syria. Of the trees themselves Pliny's account is extremely unsatisfactory : frequently he merely names them. The book is chiefly occupied with an account of their products, the modes of collecting and preparing them, &c. The first part of the thirteenth book is occupied with a general account of unguents, the history of their use, the modes of compounding them, and the plants from which they are chiefly derived. Palms and other exotics, chiefly those of Syria, Arabia, and Egypt, taken up without any principle of arrangement, are noticed or described in the remainder of the book. His account of the papyrus (100.11 or 21-13 or 27) goes considerably into detail. The fourteenth book is occupied with an account of the vine, and different notices respecting the various sorts of wines, closing with a somewhat spirited review of the effects of drunkenness. The fifteenth book treats of the more common sorts of fruit, the olive, apple, fig, &c. The sixteenth passes first to the most common kinds of forest trees, and then contains a great variety of remarks on general botany, and other miscellaneous notices, especially on the uses of wood and timber, into the midst of which there is awkwardly thrust some account of reeds, willows, and other plants of that kind. The seventeenth book treats of the cultivation and arrangement of trees and plants, the modes of propagating and grafting them, the diseases to which they are subject, with the modes of curing them, &c. The eighteenth book opens with an apology, in Pliny's peculiar style, on behalf of the earth, the benign parent of all, whom men have unjustly blamed for the mischievous use which they themselves have made of some of her products. The rest of the book is occupied with an account of the different sorts of grain and pulse, and a general account of agriculture. This and the preceding are by far the most valuable of the botanical books of the and exhibit a great amount of reading, as well as considerable observation.

The next eight books (xx.--xxvii.) are devoted, generally speaking, to medical botany, though the reader must not expect a writer like Pliny to adhere very strictly to his subject. Thus, a great part of the twenty-first book treats of flowers, scents, and the use of chaplets; and some of the observations about bees and bee-hives are a little foreign to the subject. Indeed, the 20th and part of the 21st book are rather a general account of the medical, floral and other productions of gardens (see 100.49, end). Then, after giving an account of various wild plants, and some general botanical remarks respecting them, Pliny returns to the subject of medicines. The classification of these is chiefly according to the sources front which they are derived, whether garden or other cultivated plants (xx.--xxii.), cultivated trees (xxiii.), forest trees (xxiv.), or wild plants (xxv.); partly according to the diseases for which they are adapted (xxvi.). Cuvier (l.c.) remarks that almost all that the ancients have told us of the virtues of their plants is lost to us, on account of our not knowing what plants they are speaking of. If we might believe Pliny, there is hardly a single human malady for which nature has not provided a score of remedies.

In the twenty-eighth book Pliny proceeds to notice the medicines derived from the human body, and from other land animals, commencing with what is tantamount to an apology for introducing the subject in that part of the work. Three books are devoted to this branch, diversified by some notices respecting the history of medicine (29.1-8), and magic, in which he does not believe, and which he considers an offshoot front the art of medicine, combined with religion and astrology (30.1, &c). The thirty-first book treats of the medical properties of various waters; the thirty-second of those of fishes and other aquatic creatures.

The remaining section of the would doubtless have been headed by Pliny "Mineralogy," though this title would give but a small idea of the nature of the contents. In the 33d book the subject of metals is taken up. It begins with various denunciations of the wickedness and cupidity of men, who could not be content with what nature had provided for them on the surface of the earth, but must needs desecrate even the abode of the Manes to find materials for the gratification of their desires. Pliny's account of gold and silver consists chiefly of historical disquisitions about rings, money, crowns, plate, statues, and the other various objects in the making of which the precious metals have been used, in which he has presented us with a number of curious and interesting notices. He also specifies when and how metallic products are used as remedies. The mention of bronze (book xxxiv.) leads him to a digression about statues and statuaries, again chiefly of an historical kind, and preserving several interesting and valuable facts (100.9-19). In the 19th chapter he enumerates the chief works of the most celebrated statuaries, but the barren inventory is enlivened by very few remarks which can satisfy the curiosity of the artist or the lover of art. The introduction of this digression, and the mention of some mineral pigments, leads Pliny to take up the subject of painting in the 35th book. His account, however, is chiefly that of the historian and anecdote collector, not that of a man who understood or appreciated the art. The early stages of it he discusses very summarily; but on its progress after it had reached some maturity, and the various steps by which it rose in estimation among the Romans, he has many valuable and interesting records. In his account of the pigments employed by the ancient painters, he mixes up the medical properties of some of them in a way peculiarly his own, though not very conducive to regularity of arrangement. His chronological notices of the eras of the art and of the most distinguished painters are extremely valuable, and he notices, usually with tolerable clearness, the great improvers of the art, and the advances which they respectively made. The reader will find in this part of the work many interesting anecdotes of the great painters of Greece; but will often wish that instead of a great variety of unimportant details, and accounts of trivial processes and mechanical excellences, Pliny had given a more full and satisfactory account of many of the masterpieces of antiquity, which he only barely mentions. The excellent materials which he had before him in the writings of several of the ancient artists, and others which he might have consulted, might have been worked up, in better hands, into a far more interesting account. After a short notice of the plastic art, a few chapters at the end of the book are devoted to the medical and other properties of various mineral products, the use of bricks, &c.

For the 36th book "lapidum natural restat," as Pliny says, "hoc est praecipua morum insania." Marble and the other kinds of stone and kindred materials used in buildings, or rather the admirable and curious works in which they have been employed (including a notice of sculpture and sculptors), occupy the greater portion of the book, the remainder of which treats of other minerals, and the medicinal and other uses to which they were applied. The 37th book treats, in a similar manner, of gems and precious stones, and the fine arts as connected with the department of engraving, the whole concluding with an energetic commendation of Italy, as the land of all others the most distinguished by the natural endowments and the glory of its inhabitants, by the beauty of its situation, and its fertility in everything that can minister to the wants of man.

The style of Pliny is characterised by a good deal of masculine vigour and elevation of tone, though its force is frequently rather the studied vehemence of the rhetorician than the spontaneous outburst of impassioned feeling. In his fondness for point and antithesis, he is frequently betrayed into harshness, and his pregnant brevity not uncommonly degenerates into abruptness and obscurity, though much of this latter characteristic which is found in his writings is probably due to the corrupt state of the text.