of ancient times are nearly wanting. But the impossibility of believing that knowledge in natural history would be attained and furthered without collections induced Professor Beckmann to express the opinion in a short but interesting paper on this subject, some ninety years ago, that the origin of such collections was to be found in the old custom of keeping curious and remarkable objects in temples. This opinion gains some ground, as the medical sciences are considered to have originated in the written reports of convalescents about their sickness, and the remedies used, which were posted in the temple of Æsculapius for everybody’s instruction. There are some interesting facts quoted by the classic authors. The skins of the hairy men from the Gorgades Islands, brought home by Hanno’s expedition, were still preserved in the temple of Juno, three hundred years after Carthage was destroyed. The late Professor J. Wyman ingeniously suggested that they might be the skins of the gorilla. The horns of the Scythic bulls, exceedingly rare, and alone capable of preserving the water of the Styx, were given by Alexander the Great to the temple of Delphi. The horns of the renowned obnoxious steer from Macedon were presented by King Philip to the temple of Hercules; the abnormal omoplate of Pelops was in the temple at Elis; the horns of the so-called Indian ants, in the temple of Hercules at Erythris; the crocodile brought home by the expedition to the sources of the Nile, in the temple of Isis at Cæsarea. A large number of similar cases are quoted in Professor Beckman’s above-mentioned paper. The choice of places devoted to religious service, for such deposits, was very appropriate, every spoliation of them being considered sacrilege. So it happened that such curiosities were preserved many centuries, and the not infrequent additions in such a space of time formed at last a somewhat considerable collection, open at any time and to everybody. The variety of prominent objects was certainly instructive to the observers.
Apollonius saw with wonder in India the trees bearing the different kinds of nuts he had seen before preserved in the temples in Greece. After all, things brought together in such confusion were the origin of collections; and in fact this custom was continued through the Middle Ages, changed only by the exclusion of objects not agreeing with the sanctity of the place. In a votive temple on the battle-field of Feuchtwangen hung the omoplate said to be that of the commander of the Teutonic Order who had fallen in battle four hundred years ago; it is now
