For his encyclopaedic Historie of Four-Footed Beasts published in 1607,
Edward Topsell borrowed heavily from Konrad Gesner’s Latin
Historia Animalium published in Zurich (1551-8), even to the extent
of taking an explanatory epistle that justified the project of zoology,
as his discipline was later to be known. Because animals are part
of the same creation as ourselves, Gesner condemned those who
think animals beneath their concern:
But if any man be so Barbarous, as to thinke that the beasts
and such other creatures, cannot affoord him any subiect
woorthy of his contempaltion [sic], then let him thinke so of
himselfe likewise; for what ignoble basenesse is there in bloode,
flesh, bones, vaines, and such like? Doth not the body of man
consist thereof? And then how abhominable art thou to thy selfe,
that doest not rather looke into these which are so neere of
kinde vnto thee?
