what's that she's chewing on?

the guardian's head

nomnomnomnomnomnomnomnomnom

mysterycreature said:
what's that she's chewing on?

That is a question all men have pondered.
For example, Pliny the Younger once said;
"
The subject was scarcely popular with his countrymen ; and its materials were to he sifted from Greek writers of every school, with a toil and patience which few can duly estimate. The abstracts thus made filled one hundred and sixty closely written volumes, and though the sentiments, or, as we should now term them, the theories, of his authors were not a little discordant, he was well able to separate their matter from their opinions ; and, if sometimes found to have hastily adopted hypotheses for facts, it must be ed that there existed then no standard for the test of fact — that what he had abstracted had the sanction of venerable names — and that the period of sound criticism comes in only when vast stores of facts and incidents have been collected ; and Pliny was then the most diligent accumulator for a riper age. To him belongs the glory of having harvested the materials for future science. Where attempts at explanation were made, occult causes, in the ignorance of experiment, were the only resource ; and even the great Galileo took refuge in " Nature's abhorrence of a vacuum," for the only solution he could give of an operation which now its of such rational explanation. Even the errors of these authors are a portion of the " History of Nature," and Pliny's record of them becomes valuable, where otherwise his narrative tempts only to a smile.

The light of modern science clears away the mist ; yet few, even of ourselves, are privileged, from our higher sphere of advancement, to look down contemptuously on the erroneous conjectures or superstitious feelings exemplified in this cyclopaedia of the Roman naturalist :
"