Natural History

Natural History is an encyclopedia of sorts written by Pliny the Elder, a Roman writer and naval commander who was born in 23 A.D., and died in 79 A.D. of a heart attack while journeying to Pompeii to rescue relatives living there . Natural History is probably the Ur Example of The Big Book of Everything , predating Isidore of Seville's Etymologies by 421 years. Like Etymologies, the point of Natural History was to document all information which was known about the world at the time. However, in hindsight, while quite a bit of the information is accurate, such as amber conducting electricity, there are also quite a few instances of Urban Legend of the time, and exaggerations, resulting in quite a few unintentional instances of Critical Research Failure by modern standards.

A translation from 1861 can be found here: https://archive.org/stream/plinysnaturalhis00plinrich#page/n0/mode/2up

Natural History contains examples of the following tropes:

Arbitrary Skepticism: While Pliny freely accepts the idea of Sciapods (see below), even he acknowledges that the "phoenix" sent to Emperor Claudius was probably a fake.
Big Omnibus of Everything: A collection of 37 Books, covering zoology, medicine, geography, astronomy, anthropology, botany, agriculture, metallurgy, mineralogy, art history, pharmacology, meteorology, ethnography, and human physiology.
Epistolary Novel: The book's preface takes the form a long letter written by Pliny to his friend, Emperor Vespasian.
Flat World: Pliny states that the earth is not a sphere, but that the world's shape is fluid.
Human Subspecies: At one point, he describes the Sciapods, a race of one-legged men found in Africa, with feet so large that they can use them as parasols when lying down. He also talks about a race of mouthless men called the Astomi who live off of scents.
Mix-and-Match Critters: At one point Pliny describes Papio, a species of ape with a dog's head. When Pliny described this, he may have been referring to the baboon. At another point, he describes a bird which has great horns growing from its head. Like with the Papio, he was probably referring to a real animal, in this case a hornbill.
Turtle Island: Pristis, a giant fish so large that sailors mistake its back for an island.