While the statements of these early writers have been too frequently dismissed as fabulous and unreliable, it is only just to them to recall the fact that some of the details that have come into reproach have after all been found authentic. Sir Emerson Tennant in his work on Ceylon very justly observes that “we ought not to be too hasty in casting ridicule upon the narratives of ancient travellers. In a geographical point of view they possess great value, and if sometimes they contain statements which appear marvellous, the mystery is often explained away by a more minute and careful enquiry.” The Troglodytes mentioned by Pliny, Aristotle and Herodotus yet exist in the Bosjesmen of to-day and still preserve many of the peculiarities and customs that those early writers described. Du Chaillu rediscovered the gorillas that Hanno, the ancient Carthaginian, endeavoured to capture, and Stanley encountered the pigmy tribes that are mentioned by travellers of a thousand years before. We accept in full faith the statements of such men as Captain Cook and Dr. Livingstone, and we may reasonably conclude that there have been many other and earlier travellers as scrupulously truthful. There have, undoubtedly, been travellers who have too credulously accepted mere hearsay in place of actual observation, and these, whether ancient, mediæval, or modern, are responsible for the stigma that has at times attached to “Travellers’ tales”: all that we are at present careful to assert is that the great bulk of travellers and authors in the Middle Ages—as in all other ages—were neither the fools nor the knaves that the malicious or the hypercritical would sometimes fain represent them. We speedily find, on opening any of the books on natural history that were issued in the Middle Ages, that such ancient writers as Pliny, Aristotle, or Herodotus, and other venerable authorities are held in great reverence, and that the prefatory “as Pliny saith” gives at once dignity and authenticity to any statement advanced. Mediæval zoology is no more independent of the gatherings of previous centuries than the dogmas of nineteenth century Christianity are independent of the writings of Isaiah.