SYLVA SYLVARUM: Ов A NATURAL HISTORY. IN TEN CENTURIES. WRITTEN BY THE RIGHT HONOURABLE FRANCIS LORD VERULAM, VISCOUNT ST. ALBAN. PUBLISHED AFTER THE AUTHOR'S DEATH BY WILLIAM RAWLEY, DOCTOR OF DIVINITY, LATE HIS LORDSHIP'S CHAPLAIN. LONDON: Printed by J. H. for William Lee at the Turk's Head in Fleet Street, next to the Mitre. 1627. ΤΟ THE MOST HIGH AND MIGHTY PRINCE CHARLES, BY THE GRACE OF GOD, KING OF GREAT BRITAIN, FRANCE, AND IRELAND, May it please Your Most Excellent Majesty, THE whole body of the Natural History, either designed or written by the late Lord Viscount St. Alban, was dedicated to Your Majesty, in his book De Ventis, about four years past, when Your Majesty was Prince: so as there needed no new dedication to this work, but only in all humbleness to let Your Majesty know it is yours. It is true, if that Lord had lived, Your Majesty ere long had been invoked to the protection of another History; whereof, not Nature's kingdom, as in this, but these of Your Majesty's (during the time and reign of King Henry the Eighth) had been the subject; which since it died under the designation merely, there is nothing left but Your Majesty's princely goodness, graciously to accept of the undertaker's heart and intentions; who was willing to have parted for a while with his darling philosophy, that he might have attended your royal commandment in that other work. Thus much I have been bold in all lowliness to represent unto Your Majesty, as one that was trusted with his Lordship's writings even to the last. And as this work affecteth the stamp of Your Majesty's royal protection, to make it more current to the world; so under the protection of this work, I presume in all humbleness to approach Your Majesty's presence, and to offer it up into your sacred hands. Your Majesty's most loyal and devoted subject, W. RAWLEY. TO THE READER. HAVING had the honour to be continually with my lord in compiling of this work, and to be employed therein, I have thought it not amiss (with his lordship's good leave and liking), for the better satisfaction of those that shall read it, to make known somewhat of his lordship's intentions touching the ordering and publishing of the same. I have heard his lordship often say, that if he should have served the glory of his own name, he had been better not to have published this Natural History for it may seem an indigested heap of particulars, and cannot have that lustre which books cast into methods have; but that he resolved to prefer the good of men, and that which might best secure it, before anything that might have relation to himself. And he knew well that there was no other way open to unloose men's minds, being bound and, as it were, maleficiate by the charms of deceiving notions and theories, and thereby made impotent for generation of works, but only nowhere to depart from the sense and clear experience; but to keep close to it, especially in the beginning: besides, this Natural History was a debt of his, being designed and set down for a third part of the Instauration. I have also heard his lordship discourse that men (no doubt) will think many of the experiments contained in this collection to be vulgar and trivial, mean and sordid, curious and fruitless: and therefore, he wisheth that they would have perpetually before their eyes what is now in doing, and the difference between this Natural History and others. For those Natural Histories which are extant, being gathered for delight and use, are full of pleasant descriptions and pictures, and affect and seek after admiration, rarities, and secrets. But, contrariwise, the scope which his lordship intendeth, is to write such a Natural History as may be fundamental to the erecting and building of a |