Such results gave him full right to speak out, and he analyses the works of the ancients very freely, yet withal very justly and temperately. Thus he terms Dioscorides “an Author of good Antiquity, preferred by Galen before all that attempted the like before him: yet all he delivered therin is not to be conceived oraculous.” Concerning Ælianus he tells us that he was “an elegant Author, he hath left two books which are in the hands of every one—his ‘History of Animals’ and his ‘Varia Historia,’ wherein are contained many things suspicious, not a few false, some impossible.” Of Pliny himself, the great holdfast and sheet-anchor of all previous writers on natural history, he writes: “A man of great elegance and industry indefatigable, as may appear by his writings, which are never like to perish, not even with learning itself. Now what is very strange, there is scarce a popular error passant in our daies which is not either directly expressed or diductively contained in his ‘Natural History,’ which being in the hands of most men, hath proved a powerful occasion of their propagation.” The labours of Browne should ever be held in great esteem, as he had the true scientific spirit, and, regardless of all minor considerations, sought eagerly for the truth. [Illustration: FIG. 7.] In fig. 7 we have a representation of the Oannes of the Chaldeans, the Philistine Dagon,[28] the fish On, as shown on one of the slabs from the Palace of Khorsabad. While one may readily admit that the mediæval mermaid is a direct descendant from the tritons and sea-nymphs of classic mythology and fancy, and that these in turn may have descended from the yet older civilizations and creeds of Egypt and Assyria, we can hardly ascribe any close association between the Chaldean Oannes and the popular notion as to mermaids. The former is divine, and is necessarily but one, while the latter claim no divinity and no individuality, but are both numerous and nameless. The work of Oannes was moreover wholly beneficent; he taught men the arts of life—to construct cities, to found temples, to compile laws. He was a solar deity equivalent to Osiris and Apollo, bringing light and life to all. He was fabled to visit earth each morning, and at evening to plunge into the sea; a poetic description of the rising and setting of the sun. Hence his semi-piscine form was an expression of the belief that half his time was spent on earth and half below the waves. Hence, too, the moon-goddess, Derceto, that Browne refers to as at times manifesting herself to the eyes of men, at times plunged beneath the waves, was represented as half-woman, half-fish, and may be thus still seen on the coins of Ascalon. The kindly influence of solar and lunar deities—in other words, the beneficent influence of Nature and of the times and seasons—on the works of men is an altogether nobler idea than belief in classic syren or mediæval Lorelei, who charm but to destroy.