228 NATUKE STUDY. 



The Mediaeval Naturalist. 



BY STEPHEN D. PAKRISH. 



It is well for the Nature Study students to go back in 

 imagination a few centuries and see what the boys and 

 girls, even "crowned heads and the courts," were taught 

 by the Mediaeval Naturalist. For the purpose of this pa- 

 per I will take the work of Phillipe de Thaun, first briefly 

 giving a sketch of how he h-appened to write a book on 

 natural history, and somewhat of the times. 



Henry I. succeeded his brother William II. to the En- 

 glish throne in i lOO. Henry was the father of Prince Wil- 

 liam, who was drowned at sea in the attempt to rescue his 

 sister from a sinking ship, which had been wrecked by 

 reason of the carelessness of a drunken crew under the 

 command of the noted Thomas Fitz Stephens. 



Tradition has it that after the king learned of the unfor- 

 tunate death of his son and daughter, " He never smiled 

 again." That is the first line in a verse of one of our 

 most popular poems commemorating this sad event — away 

 back there in the Middle Ages. 



Because of his great progress in learning and literature, 

 Henry was surnamed The Beanclcrc, or The Scholar. 

 About the time of his second marriage, to Adelaide of 

 France, King Henry gratified his love for the study of na- 

 ture, animals in particular, by establishing an "exten- 

 sive" menagerie at Woodstock. 



In the king's study his queen Adelaide took an active 

 part and a deep interest. The celebrated French trouver, 

 Philipe de Thaun, "skilled and learned," was directed 

 to reduce to writing the ' ' wisdom of the age concern- 

 ing the strange beasts of the field and forest, the fowls 

 of the air, the monsters of the deep, and such other 



