ALDROVANDUS, ULYSSES, professor of philo-
sophy and physic at Bologna, the place of his nativity.
He was a most curious inquirer into natural history,
and travelled into the most distant countries on pur-
pose to inform himself of their natural productions.
Minerals, metals, plants, and animals, were the ob-
jects of his curious researches; but he applied himself
chiefly to birds, and was at a great expence to have fig-
ures of them drawn from the life. Aubert le Mire
says, that he gave a certain painter, famous in that
art, a yearly salary of 200 crowns, for 30 years and
upwards; and that he employed at his own expence
Lorenzo Bennini and Cornelius Swintus, as well as the
famous engraver Christopher Coriolanus. These ex-
pences ruined his fortune, and at length reduced him
to the utmost necessity; and it is said that he died
blind in an hospital at Bologna, at a great age, in
1605. Mr Bayle observes, that antiquity does not
furnish us with an instance of a design so extensive and
so laborious as that of Aldrovandus, with regard to
natural history; that Pliny has treated of more kinds
of subjects, but only touches lightly on them, saying
but a little upon any thing, whereas Aldrovandus has
collected all he could meet with. His compilation, or
that compiled upon his plan, consists of 13 volumes in
folio, several of which were printed after his death.
He himself published his Ornithology, or History of
Birds, in three folio volumes, in 1599; and his seven
books of insects, which make another volume of the
same size. The volume Of Serpents, three Of Quad-
rupeds, one Of Fishes, that Of exanguious Animals,
the History of Monsters, with the Supplement to that
of Animals, the treatise of Metals, and the Dendro-
logy or History of Trees, were published at several
times after the death of Aldrovandus, by the care of
different persons; and Aldrovandus is the sole author
only of the first six volumes of this work, the rest having
been finished and compiled by others, upon the plan of
Aldrovandus: a most extensive plan, wherein he not
only relates what he has read in naturalists, but remarks
also what historians have written, legislators ordained,
and poets feigned: he explains also the different uses
which may be made of the things he treats of, in com-
mon life, in medicine, architecture, and other arts;
in short, he speaks of morality, proverbs, devices, ridd-
les, hieroglyphics, and many other things which relate
to his subject.