Sir Thomas Browne / by Edmund Gosse.

  • Gosse, Edmund, 1849-1928.
Date:
1905
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sir Thomas Browne / by Edmund Gosse. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    light of the glow-worm was perpetual, and that luminous waters could be distilled from it. Browne caught glow-worms and kept them alive on fresh turf for eighteen days, closely examining through that time the character of their light. He observed that it was not suffused all over the body of the insect, but pro- ceeded from a small white part near the tail, from whence there ariseth a flame of a circular figure and emerald-green colour. Of those which he kept in captivity, he notes that, as they declined and the luminous humour dried, their light grew languid and at last went out with their lives. He kept spiders in a glass with a toad, in order to test the legend that these creatures mutually poison each other. But there was no poisoning. What happened was that the spiders ran about over the body of the toad and sat upon its head. At last, upon advantage, he swallowed seven of them, and afterwards dined heartily on bees, in neither case suffering from any inconvenience. In the course of an examination of vulgar errors about grass- hoppers, Browne examined those curious masses of foam and froth which country people call '^ cuckoo- spit, and made a close investigation of the little bright-green, cicada-like insects which inhabit them in a larval state. The fact is, that Brown conducted minute investigations of this humble kind far more vigorously than he did examinations of the huge and pompous parts of the animal creation. For the naturalist of the early seventeenth century, the series of recognised heraldic monsters possessed a dangerous fascination. To deny their existence was almost impossible, in the face of the fact that Holy Scripture seemed to give a direct confirmation of it. It