124 Harrison
appear in writings of Plinius, Cardanus, Albertus, and divers other of the
Arabians, being taught with much fabulous matter, a great part not only
untried, but notoriously untrue.”^24
None of this meant the end of resort to written texts. Rather, the new
engagement with nature brought with it a more critical and selective ap-
proach to the use of such authorities. Nehemiah Grew (1641–1712), one
of the fathers of plant anatomy, announced in his catalog of the Royal
Society’s natural history collection that “I have made the Quotations, not
to prove things well known... as if Aristotle must be brought to prove a
Man hath ten Toes.” Instead, authorities were cited “To be my Warrant, in
matters less credible.”^25 The same care is taken in the Ornithology (1678)
of John Ray and Francis Willoughby, who state that in the composition of
the work they have not “scraped together whatever of this nature is any
where extant, but have used choice, and inserted only such particulars
as our selves can warrant upon our own knowledge and experience, or
whereof we have assurance by the testimony of good authors or suffi -
cient Witnesses.”^26 Ray and Willoughby proposed three legitimate sources
for natural histories—personal warrant, good authors, and suffi cient wit-
nesses. The importance of the fi rst had long since been stressed by Bacon,
whose principle it was to “admit nothing but on the faith of eyes, or at
least of careful and severe examination; so that nothing is exaggerated for
wonder’s sake.” Only thus could natural history be purged of “fables and
superstitions and follies.”^27 While the bookish orientation of Renaissance
natural historians may seem somewhat remote from these new observa-
tional practices, there are signifi cant points of continuity. The human-
ist practices of excerpting, compiling, classifying, and sifting of textual
evidence are not unconnected to the business of weighing and assessing
testimonies and dealing with discrete matters of fact. Hence, the mental
habits involved in the compilation of encyclopedic works of natural his-
tory could be, and undoubtedly were, reoriented toward the study of the
empirical world.^28 But while both forms of natural history needed criteria
for distinguishing good authors and reliable witnesses, such criteria be-
came increasingly important during the seventeenth century.
New tests for the trustworthiness of observers stressed social status,
education and training, personal virtues, and institutional settings. It has
been suggested that in early- modern England credibility was associated
with one’s “gentlemanly” status.^29 It is also likely that standards for the
reliability of testimony were imported from the legal context of the court-
room into newer scientifi c institutions, while the practice of taking medi-
cal histories also provided a precedent for the new factually based natu-
ral histories.^30 The Parisian Royal Academy of Sciences, founded in 1666,