The working and superintendence of the printing press has up to comparatively recent years been considered such essentially masculine labour that it is rather curious to find on the title-page of Cogan’s book that it was “printed by Anna Griffin for Roger Ball, and are to be sold at his shop without Temple-Barre at the Golden Anchor.” As the ingredients used as remedies by our ancestors came largely from the animal and vegetable kingdoms, we get in these medical works a good deal, indirectly, of natural history lore. Thus Cogan strongly commends the eating of cabbage leaves as a “preservative of the stomache from surfetting and the head from drunkennesse.” “Raw Cabage with Vinegar so much as he list.” The philosophy of the thing is that “the Vine and the Coleworts be so contrarie by Nature that if you plant Coleworts neare to the rootes of the Vine of it selfe it will flee from them, therefore it is no maruaile if Coleworts be of such force against drunkennesse.” Macer tells of the virtue of fennel as a restorative of youth, and bases his treatment on the assertion that “Serpentis whan thei are olde and willing to wexe stronge, myghty, and yongly agean thei gon and eten ofte fenel and thei become yongliche and myghty.” Coles, in his “Adam in Eden,” commends the Eyebright as a remedy for weak eyes, on the all-sufficient ground that goldfinches, linnets, and other birds eat of this plant to strengthen their sight. Many of these prescriptions of our grandfathers’ great-grandfathers would have supplied ample justification for action on the part of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, had so invaluable a society been extant in those good old times of bull-baiting, cock-throwing brutality. Thus, in one remedy, the first step is to “take a red cock, pluck him alive, and bruise him in a mortar,” in another we must take a cat, cut off her ears and tail and mix the blood thereof with a little new milk, while the victim to tight boots must find relief for his blistered heel by skinning a mouse alive and laying the skin, while still warm, upon the injured spot. Scores of such instances of selfish indifference to suffering could readily be adduced. We need scarcely pause to dwell on books dealing with cookery, distillation, gardening, and such like household economics, though it will be readily seen how in these again the natural history knowledge—or want of it—of our ancestors finds room for its display, but pass on to the books that deal with animals and the works of nature generally, from the theological point of view.