NATURAL SCIENCES. 



Natural Sciences in Antiquity. Their Decadence in the Middle Age* Rural Economy in the 

 time of Charlemagne. The Monk Strabus. Botanical Gardens. Botany aided by Medi- 

 cine. Hildegarde, Abbess of Bingen. Peter of Cresceutiis. Vincent of BeauvaU. Fables 

 and Popular Errors. Jean Dondi. Bartholomew Glauvil. Naturalist Traveller*. 

 Aristotle and Pliny restored to honour. Gardens in the Sixteenth Century. The Conquest* 

 of Science in Travel. Bernard Palissy. G. Agricolu. Conrad Gesner. Methods of Botany. 

 Paiutcrs and Engravers of Natural History. 



HE great work of Pliny the Elder, which 

 "contains in its one hundred and thirty- 

 seven books the sum and substance of all 

 . the knowledge of antiquity with regard to 

 arts and sciences, is unquestionably replete 

 with erudition, but it is also typical of the 

 extreme confusion which then prevailed iii 

 the domain of natural and physical sciences. 

 The tendency to sophistry and paradox, the 

 subtleties of dialectics, had changed the 

 direction of scientific studies, and abruptly 

 closed the broad vistas which the admirable 

 labours of Aristotle opened to the human mind, in teaching it to study 

 directly and materially Nature, which all the ancient religious had made 

 divine, under the manifold form of the gods and goddesses of paganism 

 (Fig. 80). The observation of facts and the search of causes seemed to have 

 become useless ; the marvellous and the strange were preferred before simple 

 arid logical truth ; and prevalent opinions were accepted without putting them 

 to the test of criticism or the control of experience. With regard to the 

 theory of the elements and the three reigns, as to the history of minerals, 

 plants, and animals, the most absurd and extravagant fables, allied to the 

 wildest conceptions of popular credulity, had become current. Pliny, 



