on the fame fubject ever agree. The hiftorical painter, especially he who would represent the fictions of the poets, may take greater liberties, and study by all methods to elevate his subject by adding the highest strokes of art, in order to please the eye, and raise in the mind ideas equal to the historian or poet he would represent: yet every one who reads natural history, and fees figures and descriptions of things in nature, sup. poses they are, or ought to have been immediately drawn and described from nature. But no experienced man, when he beholds an hiftorical piece, fuppofes the figures there drawn are like to those they are intended to reprefent either in feature or person, any farther than in general the hiftorian or poet may have told us, that one man was a graceful perfon, another a little crooked or deformed; which accidents a painter has liberty to carry to what degree of perfection or imperfection he can conceive, provided always he doth not contradict the letter of his hiftorian. But in drawing after nature, a moft religious and fcrupulous ftrictness is to be obferved; and by this means only we can de*monstrate, that nature is or is not the fame through

through all times. If natural hiftorians, or they who draw for them, would carefully observe these rules, fome of them might, perhaps, produce figures that would be deemed perfect by the knowing naturalifts of these times, and escape their cenfure; then might they, like the celebrated ftatues of the ancient Greeks and Romans, pass down as models to future ages, as things justly and truly representing nature; but these things are rather to be wished for than expected.

I have been as perfect in my Natural History as the nature of the thing will admit of, in order that it may be added to a new general Orni-,,. thology (which, I think, is wanting) in case any one fit for the task should undertake it. It may not be here improper to give my thoughts on that fubject, the study of which has lain dormant for many years: I know no English author who has wrote any thing confiderable fince Mr. Ray revised Willoughby's manufcript History of Birds, which was published anno 1678, till of later years Mr. Ray hath added fome few, which fee in his Synopfis Method. Avium, &c.

where

1

where he has mentioned the authors from whom he collected them. The Memoirs of the Academy Royal of Paris, on fuch an occafion, ought alfo to be confulted, where fomething new may be collected. Mr. Catesby, in his History of Carolina, &c. hath figured and defcribed upwards of a hundred rare birds, the greatest part of which would come into a new history, being moftly non-defcripts. Albin hath published a great many, I think upwards of 300 figures; but, they being chiefly collected from Willoughby, a compiler muft look cautiously on him; what new birds he has worthy of any notice are from Mr. Dandridge's collection, the originals of which I have seen, and could wifh Albin's copies after them had been better; for what is well done after nature itself will be always valuable. Albin has given fome draughts of birds, which, he fays, were from Sir Thomas Lowther's collection; but I am very doubtful as to them, they being taken from drawings done by fome very mean peformer, which Albin has not thought proper to confefs. By accident I happened to meet with some of thefe drawings, which has confirmed me in the truth of what I fay. The natural

histories

Histories we have had in England, till of late years, are mostly, tranflations from other languages, which has rendered the understanding of them fomewhat difficult; for I believe it altogether impracticable to make a translation run so smooth and intelligible as the original from which one tranflates, without lofing a good deal of the true fenfe and meaning of its author. This we daily discover in translators, who are forced, in fome particular parts, to give the words of the first author in the margin, because they cannot be intelligibly rendered in the language of the tranflator; fo that being in its original language is always an advantage to a book, because translations must neceffarily, at least in some small degree, give the readers of them different ideas from the originals. My Natural History hath the advantage to be original in its figures, as well as its defcriptions; not one of the former being copied from others, or the latter either translated or transcribed.

We are much deceived by people who fhew foreign birds and beafts; for they, to make them seem more rare, often pretend them to be natives

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natives of places very distant and unknown, by which, not only the ignorant, but fometimes the more knowing, are deceived; and, to ftrike us with surprise, they pretend that to be a fierce, favage and untameable creature, which in its real nature is very gentle and harmless. From fuch impofitions proceeds, the vulgar opinion, that the porcupine is a fierce beast, and that it can kill by fhooting its quills, though indeed he is a beast of the more gentle and harmless kind. I believe there are few obferving people, that are any way curious, but must have detected fome of their cheats. Many African birds have got the name of Americans amongst us, because they generally come to us from the Weft-Indies; they being first brought thither from Africa in fhips, which trade in Negroe flaves, and presented by captains to governors and planters in America, from whom they are often fent into England as prefents to the nobility and our London merchants, without mentioning their being natives of Africa, by which mistake many birds are afferted to be natives of countries where they were not bred. Therefore, fince it is not always poffible to gain fuch full

and