In the theology too of these dark ages many animals occupied a distinguished place, and were not only venerated in their own proper persons, on account of their size, their power, their uncouth figure, their resemblance[x] to man, or their supposed qualities and influence, but were also looked upon as sacred to one or other of the interminable catalogue of divinities, to whose service they were devoted, and on whose altars they were sacrificed. For these also Menageries must have been constructed, in which not only their physical peculiarities but even their moral qualities must have been to a certain extent studied; although the passions and prejudices of the multitude would naturally corrupt the sources of information thus opened to them, by the intermixture of exaggerated perversions of ill observed facts and by the addition of altogether imaginary fables.