218 EPOCHS IN THE HISTORY OF THE CONTEMPLATION 



countries about the Baltic, and in the extreme North in 

 Scandinavia, are not to be attributed to commerce by sea 

 properly so called, but to the far extended inland traffic of 

 the Arabs. ( 336 ) 



Geography did not continue to be restricted to the 

 enumeration of countries and their boundaries, and to 

 positions in latitude and longitude, (which were multiplied 

 by Abul-Hassan) ; ( 337 ) it led a people familiar with nature to 

 consider the organic productions of different places, and more 

 especially those of the vegetable world. The horror which the 

 followers of Islam have for anatomical examinations pre- 

 vented all progress in the natural history of animals. They 

 were content with appropriating to themselves by translation 

 what they could find in Aristotle ( 338 ) and Galen; yet 

 Avicenna's history of animals, (which is in the Royal Library 

 at Paris), ( 339 ) differs from that of Aristotle. As a botanist 

 we may namelbn-Baithar of Malaga, ( 34 ) who,fromhisjournies 

 into Greece, Persia, India, and Egypt, may also be regarded 

 as an example of the endeavour to compare by direct observa- 

 tion the productions of different regions, of the East and of 

 the West. The study of medicines was, however, always 

 the point from which these endeavours proceeded ; it was 

 through it that the Arabs long swayed the schools of 

 Christendom, and for its improvement and completion 

 Ibn-Sina (Avicenna), a native of AfFschena near Bokhara, 

 Ibn-Eoschd (Averroes) of Cordova, the younger Serapion of 

 Syria, and Mesue of Maridin on the Euphrates, availed 

 themselves of all the materials furnished by the Arabian 

 caravan and sea traffic. I have purposely cited these widely- 

 separated birth-places of celebrated and learned Arabs, be- 

 cause they bring vividly before us the manner in which, by 



