Selections From The History of the World Commonly Called The Natural History of C. Plinius Secundus

Minor edge and corner wear; no dj; lightly scuffed and scratched; corners are gently bumped and rubbed; some light shelf wear; ex-library with the usual library markings; overall a nice used copy! Blue boards with silver lettering on the spine. 496 historical and informative pages! "According to Bacon, Pliny's Natural History is not worth reading. It is 'fraught with much fabulous matter, a great part not only untried, but notoriously untrue, to the great derogation of the credit of natural history with the grave and sober kind of wits.' As thinkers, Pliny and Bacon were certainly poles apart, but as men they had quite a lot in common. Both were martyrs to experimental science. Bacon died of a chill that he caught while stuffing a chicken with snow, to test the preservative effects of refrigeration; and Pliny was asphyxiated by volcanic gases while investigating at close quarters the great eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 79." ---- from the Introduction.