sister, began to extend his acquaintance, and succeeded so well in his profession, that, in 1545, he was appointed professor of medicine in the university. He also obtained the office of physician to the Cardinal of Tournon, whom he accompanied on his missions in France, Italy, and the Low Countries, of which occasions he eagerly availed himself to increase his knowledge of natural history. Returning once more to his usual place of residence he established an anatomical theatre, at which he lectured several hours daily to a numerous audience. His passion for dissection was so strong, that he opened one of his own children after death, and this circumstance has naturally enough given rise to the opinion, that he must have been a man destitute of sensibility; which, however, does not appear to have been the case. His wife having died in 1560, he soon procured another, poor and handsome like the first. While on a journey to Toulouse he was attacked by dysentery, occasioned by eating too many figs, and he died at Realmont, whither he had gone to visit a patient. His death happened on the 30th July 1566, in the fifty-ninth year of his age. He was a man of very small stature, but robust and active. At the age of twenty-five he gave up the use of wine and spirits, from an apprehension of gout; but he compensated for his abstemiousness in these articles by indulging his appetite for fruit and pastry. Although he had acquired considerable sums of money in the practice of his profession, he expended them in the gratification of his taste for building, and in various acts of generosity; so that he left very little behind him. ULYSSES ALDROVANDI. One of the most celebrated naturalists of the sixteenth century was Ulysses Aldrovandi, professor at Bologna, who was born in that city in 1527, and died on the 4th of May 1605. He was of a noble family, and his fortune enabled him to travel extensively, to collect materials for his books, and to employ artists in painting and engraving suitable illustrations. He carried, indeed, his liberality in this respect so far, that, having expended his whole fortune in his enthusiastic pursuit of natural history, he left nothing for the support of his old age, and is commonly believed to have died in the hospital of his native city. Cuvier, in a notice of his life in the Biographie Universelle, regards this circumstance as doubtful; imagining it improbable that the senate of Bologna, to whom he bequeathed his museum and manuscripts, and who laid out large sums after his death in completing the publication of his works, would have left him destitute during his life. This, however, is mere conjecture; and there is too much reason to fear that, like many other eminent persons, he was abandoned to struggle with misfortune, and not advanced to honour and estimation until after his career was finished, when they could be of no use to him.