more than innocent folly perished with them. ON AN OLD BOOK OF NATURAL HISTORY The observation that ‘Truth is stranger than fiction’ is looked upon, in these days, rather as a platitude than a paradox; yet it does not necessarily follow that we, in our heart of hearts, really accept this smart saying. But everyone who has read in our old literature must admit that it is true of our forefathers; their idea of truth and their so-called facts are a thousand times stranger to us than their fiction. The mediaeval romances are full of the marvellous, but they pale before the grave books of instruction written by quite serious, learned old gentlemen. Some of the latter merely set out to edify the young mind, but the result of their labours often seems to us a very riot of the imagination, and our schoolboys would consider themselves lucky if they could meet with matter one-half so entertaining. The quaint, unconscious humour of these solemn, old authors over-shadows even their historical and antiquarian interest. Some such thoughts as these were going through my head the other night when I was gleefully devouring, in one of the Early English Text Society’s wonderful reprints, some extracts from a very quaint old book: ‘The noble lyfe and natures of man, Of bestes, serpentys, fowles and fisshes,’ by one Laurens Andrewe. The date of this volume is unknown, but it was probably written and published early in the sixteenth century. The Third Part of the book is particularly occupied with the noble life and natures of fishes, and begins: ‘Here after followeth of the natures of the fisshes of the See, whiche be right profitable to be understande.’ Now I care little for Natural History at any time, and fishes do not make a very lively subject for study, but in the hands of Master Andrewe, Natural History becomes ‘all a wonder,’ and the sea, to him, is certainly filled with creatures that are ‘rich and strange.’