58 SCIENCE OF THE MIDDLE AGES. FT. n. 



Leonardo da Vinci, 1452. We must not pass on into 

 the sixteenth century without mentioning Leonardo da 

 Vinci, the great painter, who was also very remarkable for 

 the number of interesting inventions which he made in 

 mechanics. Leonardo was born in 1452 at Vinci, in 

 Tuscany; he is so generally spoken of as a painter that 

 many people do not know that he left behind him fourteen 

 valuable works on Natural Philosophy. He invented 

 water-mills and water-engines, as well as locks to shut off 

 the water, such as are now used on our canals and rivers. 

 He studied the flight of birds, and tried to make a mechani- 

 cal apparatus for flying, and, besides being one of the best 

 engineers of his day, he made many curious machines, such 

 as a spinning machine, a water-pump, and a planing- 

 machine. Some of these things were only models which 

 he made for his own pleasure, but they show that he, like 

 Roger Bacon, was very much in advance of his age ; and 

 he did good service to science by the careful experiments 

 which he made, and by insisting that it was only by going 

 to Nature herself that men can really advance in knowledge. 



Chief Works consulted. Draper's 'Hist, of Intellectual Develop- 

 ment ;' Baden Powell's ' Hist of Natural Philosophy,' 1834 ; Sprengel 

 ' Histoire de la Medecine,' 1850 ; ' Penny Cyclopaedia,' art. 'Arabians ; ' 

 'Encyclopaedias Metropolitana and Britannica;' Rodwell's 'Birth of 

 Chemistry,' 1874 ; 'The Works of Geber,' Englished by R. Russell, 

 1678; Whewell's 'History of the Inductive Sciences;' Priestley's 

 * History of Vision,' 1772 ; Smith's ' Optics,' 1778 ; ' Edinburgh En- 

 cyclopaedia,' art. Chemistry; Bacon's 'Opus Majus,' by Dr. Jebb, 

 1733; Bacon, ' Sa Vie, ses Ouvrages, et ses Doctrines,' by M. 

 Charles, 1861 ; Ventura, 'Ouvrages Physico-mathematiques de Leon- 

 ardo da Vinci,' 1797; Draper's 'Conflict between Religion and 

 Science,' 1875. 



