PREFACE.

The only translation of PLINY’S NATURAL HISTORY which has hitherto appeared in the English language is that by Philemon Holland, published in the latter part of the reign of Elizabeth Queen Elizabeth I of England.. It is no disparagement to Holland’s merits, as a diligent and generally faithful translator, to say that his work is unsuited to the requirements of the nineteenth century.

In the present translation, the principal editions of Pliny have been carefully consulted, and no pains have been spared, as a reference to the Notes will show, to present to the reader the labors of recent commentators, among whom stands pre-eminent the celebrated Cuvier Georges Cuvier, the French naturalist and zoologist.. It has been a primary object to bring to the illustration of the work whatever was afforded by the progress of knowledge and modern discoveries in science and art. Without ample illustration, Pliny’s valuable work would lack much of the interest which belongs to it and present difficulties scarcely surmountable by anyone who has not made the Author his especial study.

In the first two Books, the text of Hardouin Jean Hardouin, a French Jesuit and classical scholar., as given in Lemaire’s edition (Paris, 1827), has been followed; in the...