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 70 BRITISH PHYSICIANS, colour of that part only remaineth. Now this light, as it appeareth and disappeareth in their life, so doth it go quite out at their death — As we have observed in some, which, preserved in fresh grass, have lived and shined eighteen days ; but as they declined, their light grew languid, and at last went out with their lives. Thus also the Torpedo, which alive, hath power to stupify at a distance ; hath none, upon contact, being dead, as Galen and Eondeletius particularly experimented. And thus far also those philosophers concur with us, which held the sun and stars were living creatures, for they conceived their lustre depended on their lives : but if they ever died, their light must also perish." — p. 205. In his chapter of the Bear, bookiii., he says — " That a bear brings forth her young informous and unshapen, which she fashioneth after by lick- ing them over, is an opinion, not only vulgar, and common with us at present, but hath been of old delivered by ancient writers. Upon this founda- tion it was an hieroglyphick with the Egyptians. Aristotle seems to countenance it ; Solinus, Pliny, and ^lian directly affirm it ; and Ovid smoothly delivereth it : but this opinion is repugnant unto the sense of every one that shall inquire into it, and Aldrovandus, from the testimony of his own eyes, affirm eth that in the cabinet of the senate of Bo- nonia there was preserved in a glass, a cub, dis- sected out of a bear, perfectly formed, and com- plete in every part." — p. 123. About the basilisk he is somewhat puzzled, but of the wolf he speaks as follows : — " Such a story as the basilisk, is that of the