The Boys' and Girls' Pliny Being parts of Pliny's "Natural History" edited for boys and girls, with an Introduction

"The Boys' and Girls' Pliny" by Pliny the Elder is an educational adaptation of the Roman author's "Natural History," edited for a younger audience in the late 19th century. This compilation aims to introduce children to various topics concerning nature, geography, and human existence, reflecting the breadth of knowledge accumulated in ancient times while making it accessible to youth. The text is expected to cover a wide spectrum of subjects, from animals and plants to metals and philosophical inquiries. The opening of this work begins with an introduction to Pliny, offering insight into his background, education, and the expansive scope of his original work on Natural History. It details Pliny's journey from a soldier to a scholar and emphasizes the extraordinary amount of research and observation he undertook to compile his encyclopedic knowledge. As the reader embarks on this exploration, they are invited to consider not only remarkable facts about the natural world but also the implications of human life and experience in the context of nature's bounty and complexity. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Gaius Plinius Secundus, known in English as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, natural philosopher, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the emperor Vespasian. He wrote the encyclopedic Naturalis Historia, a comprehensive thirty-seven-volume work covering a vast array of topics on human knowledge and the natural world, which became an editorial model for encyclopedias. He spent most of his spare time studying, writing, and investigating natural and geographic phenomena in the field.