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As to natural philosophy, he had made it more a pastime than a

study: he had rather read than digested the works of Aristotle

himself on the subject. Nevertheless, with a slight acquaintance

with that author, and the knowledge he had incidentally gathered

from other treatises of general philosophy, he could, when

necessary, entertain an assembly of learned persons in reasoning

most acutely on the wonderful virtues and singular

characteristics of many plants. He could describe exactly the

forms and habits of the syrens, and the phoenix, the only one of

its kind; he could explain how it was that the salamander lived

in fire, how drops of dew became pearls in the shell, how the

chameleon lived on air, and a thousand other secrets of the same

nature.