SECT. 2] TO THE RENAISSANCE 97 



St Hildegard obtained it, and worked it up into one of her visions. 

 At this point embryology touched, perhaps, its low-water mark. But 

 a great man was at hand, destined to carry on the Aristotelian 

 tradition and to add to it much of originality, in the shape of Albertus 

 of Cologne. Before speaking of him, however, a word must be said 

 about that very queer character, Michael Scot (i 178-1234), who, 

 according to Gunther, "appeared in Oxford in 1230 and experi- 

 mented with the artificial incubation of eggs, having got an Egyptian 

 to teach him how to incubate ostriches eggs by the heat of the Apulian 

 sun". That "muddle-headed old magician", as Singer rightly calls 

 him, was not the man to profit by it, but the point is interesting, 

 especially as an Egyptian is mentioned. Haskins, in his curious 

 studies of the scientific atmosphere of the court of the Emperor 

 Frederick II of Sicily, has shown Scot, newly arrived fi"om his 

 alchemical studies in Spain, assisting that very learned and unor- 

 thodox monarch in his artificial incubation experiments. 



2-3. Albertus Magnus 



Albertus Magnus of Cologne and Bollstadt was born in 1206, 

 and died in 1280, six years after his favourite disciple, St Thomas 

 Aquinas. The greater part of his life was spent in study and teaching 

 in one or other of the houses of the Dominican friars, to which he 

 belonged, though for a time he was Bishop of Regensburg. Albert 

 resembles Aristotle in many points, but principally because he pro- 

 duced biological work with, as it were, no antecedents. Just as 

 Aristotle's contributions to embryology were preceded by no more 

 than the diffuse speculations of the Ionian nature-philosophers, so 

 Albert's came immediately after the dead period represented by the 

 visions of St Hildegard. In many ways, Albert's position was much 

 less conducive to good work than Aristotle's. 



Albert follows Aristotle closely throughout his biological writings, 

 quoting him word for word in large amounts, but the significant 

 thing is that he does not follow him slavishly. He resembled Aristotle 

 in paying much attention to the phenomena of generation, as a rough 

 computation shows, Aristotle devoting 37 per cent, of his biological 

 writings to this subject, and Albert 31 per cent., to which Galen's 

 7 per cent, may with interest be compared. Albert is extremely 

 inferior to Aristotle, however, in point of arrangement; for Aristotle, 

 although some of his books, such as the De Generatione Animalium, 



