From the unsuspecting credulity with which this textbook of the naturalists of the middle ages continued to be received, it is evident that the science remained stationary, if it did not actually retrograde, during the lapse of fourteen or fifteen centuries. The want of opportunities of investigation may be regarded as the principal cause of this lamentable deficiency. Some of the rarer animals, it is true, were occasionally to be seen in Europe; but Menageries constructed upon a broad and comprehensive plan were as yet unknown. The first establishment of modern days, in which such a plan can fairly be said to have been realised, was the Menagerie founded at Versailles by Louis the Fourteenth. It is to this institution that we owe the Natural History of Buffon and his coadjutor Daubenton; the one as eloquent as Pliny, with little of his credulity, but with a greater share of imagination; and the other a worthy follower of Aristotle in his habits of minute research and patient investigation, but making no pretensions to the powerful and comprehensive mind and the admirable facility of generalising his ideas which so preeminently distinguished that great philosopher. Of the characters of most of the institutions which we have noticed the Tower Menagerie has at various times partaken in a greater or less degree. Originally intended merely for the safe-keeping of those ferocious beasts, which were until within the last century considered as appertaining exclusively to the royal prerogative, it has occasionally been converted into a theatre for their contests, and has terminated by adapting itself to the present condition of society as a source of rational amusement and a school of zoological science. The first notice of a Royal Menagerie in England places this establishment at Woodstock, where King Henry the First had a collection of lions, leopards, and other strange beasts. Three leopards were presented to Henry the Third by the Emperor Frederic the Second, himself a zoologist of no mean rank. From Woodstock they were transferred to the Tower; and numerous orders issued in this and the succeeding reigns to the sheriffs of London and of the counties of Bedford and Buckingham to provide for the maintenance of the animals and their keepers are extant among the Records. Thus in the year 1252 the sheriffs of London were commanded to pay four pence a day for the maintenance of a white bear; and in the following year to provide a muzzle and chain to hold the said bear while fishing, or washing himself, in the river Thames. In 1255 they were directed to build a house in the Tower for an elephant which had been presented to the king by Louis king of France; and a second writ occurs in which they were ordered to provide necessaries for him and his keepers.