ULYSSES, professor of philosophy 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 purpose to inform himself of their natural productions. Minerals, metals, plants, and animals, were the objects of his curious researches; but he applied himself chiefly to birds, and was at a great expence to have figures 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 expenses 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 Quadrupeds, one Of Fishes, that Of exanguous Animals, the History of Monsters, with the Supplement to that of Animals, the treatise Of Metals, and the Dendrology 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 common life, in medicine, architecture, and other arts; in short, he speaks of morality, proverbs, devices, riddles, hieroglyphics, and many other things which relate to his subject.