436 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



regarding the beauty and wonders of creation, and we see the glow of 

 this noble poetry radiated upon those whom logic drew away from 

 studies in natural science. Some of the results produced were indeed 

 curious. Thus, in the science of zoology, so essentially connected 

 with geology, Vincent de Beauvais and his compeers, while showing 

 a great desire to display to their readers the glories and wonders of 

 Nature, rely in their attempts to do so, not upon observation but upon 

 authority. Neglecting the wonders which the dissection of any 

 animal would have afforded them, they amplified statements found in 

 various mediaeval legends, and especially in the lives of the saints. 

 Hence such additions to learning as careful descriptions of the unicorn 

 and dragon mentioned in Scripture, and such statements as that 

 the lion when pursued by hunters effaces his tracks with the end of 

 his tail ; that the hyena can talk with shepherds, and changes its sex 

 every year ; that a certain bird is born of the fruit of a certain tree 

 when that fruit happens to fall into the water ; and innumerable other 

 statements equally valuable.* 



Very pious uses were made of this science, especially by monkish 

 writers. The phoenix rising from his ashes proved the doctrine of the 

 Resurrection ; the structure and mischief of monkeys proved the exist- 

 ence of demons ; the fact that certain monkeys have no tails served to 

 prove that Satan was shorn of his glory ; the weasel, which constantly 

 changes its place, was exhibited as a type of man estranged from the 

 word of God, and finding no rest.f 



The next great development, mainly under Church guidance, was 

 by means of the scholastic theology. Phrase-making was substituted 

 for investigation. Without the Church and within it wonderful contri- 

 butions were thus made. In the eleventh century Avicenna accounted 

 for the fossils by suggesting a "stone-making force" ; J in the thir- 

 teenth, Albert the Great attributed them to a " formative quality." * 

 In the following centuries some philosophers ventured the idea that 

 they grew from seed, and the Aristotelian doctrine of spontaneous 

 generation was constantly used to prove that these stony fossils pos- 

 sessed powers of reproduction like plants and animals. || 



Still, at various times and places, germs implanted by Greek and 

 Roman thought were warmed into life. The Arabian schools seem to 

 have been less fettered by the letter of the Koran than the contem- 

 porary Christian scholars by the letter of the Bible ; and to Avicenna 

 belongs the credit of first announcing substantially the modern geo- 

 logical theory of changes in the earth's surface. ^ 



* See Bergcr de Xivrey, " Traditions tfiratologiques," and sueh mediajval books of 

 exempla as the " Lumen animse." 



f See Rambaud, " Histoirc de la Civilisation fran^aise," Paris, 1885, vol. i, pp. 

 868, 369. 



X " Vis lapidifica." * " Virtus formatiTa." 



J Sec authorities given in Mr. Ward's essay, as above. 



•^ For Avicenna, see Lyell and D'Archiac, and from these it appears that at least one 



