ARABIAN AND MEDIEVAL SCIENCE. 69 



on the action of medicines. The weather he held also to be under 

 planetary influence. The popular weather lore still retains traces of 

 the pretended science of the astrologers ; and perhaps there are also 

 not a few of the less instructed classes, who at the present day believe 

 that certain almanac-compilers can so read the stars as to foretell the 

 future of human affairs. The influence of the planets on the weather 

 has, in common with the other pretensions of astrology, been every- 

 where derided by men of science ; but apart from all the absurdities 

 of astrology, it is curious that quite lately coincidences have been 

 traced between certain periodical positions of the principal planets, 

 disturbances of the solar atmosphere, and certain meteorological con- 

 ditions of our own atmosphere. Roger Bacon appears also to have 

 admitted the possibility of transmuting base metals into gold ; and he 

 wisely counsels those who desire to accomplish this to first study the 

 method by which nature has produced metals, and then to imitate it 

 by their art. Yet among his works we find one directed against the 

 pretensions of magical arts (" De Nullitate Magice"). Bacon wrote 

 also on various philosophical and metaphysical subjects, and in the list 

 of his acquirements must be included a considerable skill in medicine. 

 The Emperor Frederic II. caused the "Almagest" of Ptolemy to 

 be translated into Latin from the Arabic, for Greek was still unknown 

 in the West But it was in ALPHONSE X., King of Castile, that 

 astronomy found a patron whose name will ever retain a place in the 

 history of that science. The zeal which he displayed in its cultivation 

 leads us to suppose that he himself must have been well versed in the 

 science. He spared no trouble or expense in its promotion, for he 

 brought the most accomplished Christian, Jewish, and Arabian astro- 

 nomers from all parts of Europe, and provided for them in Toledo on 

 the most magnificent scale. Here they conferred together on the 

 defects of the older theories which were found to disagree with the 

 results of observation. After the labour of four years the tables were 

 compiled and published, which became famous under the name of the 

 Alphonsine Tabjes (A.D. 1250). Although these tables cost the King 

 a sum of money which would have served for a prince's ransom, they 

 proved faulty, owing to some erroneous assumptions of the compilers. 

 These consisted in giving to the fixed stars an unequal movement, to 

 represent which periods of 7,000 and 49,000 years were assigned to 

 certain motions. In the choice of these numbers we may trace the 

 influence of the Jewish astronomers, for whom the numbers 7 and 49 

 had a mystical significance. The extremely complicated hypotheses 

 which were required to account for the movement of the celestial 

 bodies caused Alphonse to make the somewhat irreverent but signifi- 

 cant remark, that had God at the creation of the world taken him into 

 His counsels, things would have been arranged in a simpler and 

 better way. In a revised edition of the Alphonsine Tables many 

 corrections were made by its compilers ; and their remaining defects 



