The Anatomy of Melancholy

Such an expedition would be a good occasion to examine many strange places: isthmuses, tidal channels, peninsulas, creeks, harbours, headlands, straits, lakes, hot springs, rocks, mountains, places and fields where cities have been ruined or swallowed up and battles fought; living creatures, sea monsters, the remora, and so on; minerals, plants, and zoophytes. Among the rest would be Herberstein’s Tartar lamb and Hector Boece’s goose-bearing tree in the Orkneys, which Cardan also accepts in book 7, chapter 36 of On the Variety of Things.

There is Varthema’s wonderful palm; the insect in Hispaniola that shines like a torch at night, so brightly that one can see to write; the spherical stones in Cuba, which nature has made in that shape; and those shaped like birds, beasts, fish, crowns, swords, saws, pots, and so on, commonly found in the metal mines of Saxony around Mansfeld, and in Poland near Nokow and Pallukie, as Münster and others report.

Every part of the world offers many rare creatures and strange things. Among these, I would like to know for certain whether there really are people of the kind Leo Suavius describes in his commentary on Paracelsus’s On Preserving Health, and Gaguinus in his description of Muscovy: people in Lucomoria, a province of Russia, who lie sound asleep as though dead all winter, from 27 November, like frogs and swallows numbed by cold, but revive around 24 April in the spring and go about their business.

I would examine Alessandro Piccolomini’s demonstration to see whether the earth’s land surface is larger than the sea’s; or whether Archimedes’ proposition is true, that the surface of all water is level. I would sound its depths and see the variety of sea monsters and fish, mermaids, mermen, sea horses, and so on, that it contains.

Or I would test the claim that Giordano Bruno scoffs at: that unless God restrained it, the sea would overflow the earth because it stands higher. Giuseppe Biancani the Jesuit foolishly fears this in his interpretation of Aristotle’s mathematical passages, and argues at length, with much supporting evidence, that in time the sea will wear away the land and water will cover the whole globe. “Could you keep from laughing, my friends?” What the sea takes away in one place, it adds in another.

I think he might more reasonably suspect that in time the sea will be filled with earth, growing trees, carcasses, and so on; that all-devouring fire, “devouring and consuming everything,” will sooner cover and dry up the vast ocean with sand and ashes.

I would investigate the true location of the earthly Paradise, and the whereabouts of Ophir, from which Solomon brought his gold: whether it was in Peru, as some suppose, or on the Golden Peninsula, as Domenico Negri, Arias Montanus, Goropius, and others maintain.