book is incomplete, and with a full

page miniature (fol. lov) show- ing Pliny in the act of presenting his work to Vespasian. Escorial Q-I-4 and R-I-5 are two other practically complete texts of the fourteenth century which Detlef- sen failed to use.
'See M. R. James, Eton Manu- scripts, p. 63, MS 134, Bl. 4. 7.,
Roberti Crikeladensis Prioris Ox- oniensis excerpta ex Plinii His- toria Naturali, 12- 13th century, in a large English hand, giving extracts extending from Book II to Book IX.
Of Balliol 124, fols. 1-138, Cos- mographia mundi, by John Free, born at Bristol or London, fellow at Balliol College, Oxford, later professor of medicine at Padua and a doctor at Rome, also well instructed in civil law and Greek, Coxe writes, "This work is noth- ing but a series of excerpts from Pliny's Natural History, beginning with the second and leaving off with the twentieth." I wonder if John Free may not have used the very MS of the first nineteen books mentioned in the foregoing note, since the second book of the Natural History is often reckoned as the first.
In Balliol 146A, 15th century, fol. 3-, the Natural History ap- pears in epitome, with a prologue opening, "I, Reginald (Retinal- dus), servant of Christ, perusing the books of Pliny . . ."
* Bologna, 952, 15th century, fols. 157-60, "Tractatus optimus in
IX PLINY'S NATURAL HISTORY S3
That the Natural History was well known as a whole at Early least by the close of the middle ages is shown by the numer- ^^|"^q^^ ous editions, some of them magnificently printed, which were turned off from the Italian presses immediately after the invention of printing. In the Magliabechian Library of Florence alone are editions printed at Venice in 1469 and 1472, at Rome in 1473 and Parma in 1481, again at Venice in 1487, 1 49 1, and 1499, not to mention Italian translations which appeared at Venice in 1476 and 1489.^ These edi- tions were accompanied by some published criticism of Pliny's statements, since in 1492 appeared at Ferrara a treat- ise On the Errors of Pliny and Others in Medicine by Nich- olas Leonicenus of Vicenza with a dedication to Politian.^ But two years later PHny found a defender in Pandulph CoUenucius.^
But Pliny's future influence will come out repeatedly in later chapters. We shall now inquire, first, what signs of experimental science he shows, either derived from the past or added by himself. Second, what he defines as magic and what he has to say about it. Third, how much of what he supposes to be natural science must we regard as essentially magic ?