52 THE LIFE AND LEGEND OF MICHAEL SCOT 



another. One of the copies of the De Animalihus 

 ad Caesarem ^ has the following colophon : ' Com- 

 pletus est liber Aristotelis de animalihus, trans- 

 latus a magistro michaele in tollecto de arabico in 

 latin um.' Now if the version was made in Toledo, 

 it was probably posterior in date to the Physionomia. 

 This indeed is no more than might have been as- 

 serted on the ground of common likelihood ; for, 

 when a compilation and a complete version of one 

 of the sources from which it was derived are both 

 found passing under the name of the same author, 

 it is but natural to suppose that the first was made 

 before the other, and that in the interval the author 

 had conceived the idea of producing in a fuller form 

 a work he had already partially published. 



Resuming then the results we have reached, it 

 appears that Scot had met with this Arabic com- 

 mentary on the Natural History of Aristotle while 

 he was still in Sicily, and had made extracts from 

 it for his Physionomia. Coming to Spain he pro- 

 bably carried the manuscript with him, and as his 

 version of the De Animalihus ad Caesarem seems to 

 have been the first complete translation he made 

 from the Arabic, and to have been published shortly 

 after he came to the Castiles, he may jDossibly have 

 begun work upon it even before his arrival there. 

 On every account, there being no positive evidence 

 to the contrary, we may conjecture that the De 

 Animalihus ad Caesarem, like the Physionomia, 

 belongs to the year 1209. If the latter work 

 appeared at Palermo in time for the royal marriage, 

 which took place in spring, the former may well 



^ Bibl. Laur. PI. xiii. sin, cod. 9 in fol perg. This ms. Avas written 

 in 1266. 



