106 NATURAL SCIENCES. 



however, whose statements were often adduced in support of them, was not 

 merely an observant compiler of facts ; he had watched and studied for 

 himself, and he died a victim to science, in attempting to contemplate too 

 closely the great eruption of Vesuvius, which destroyed the cities of Pompeii 

 and Herculaneum (H.C. 79). 



When the Iloman decadence set in, the natural sciences, which had 

 remained motionless for four centuries, were at the same point as they had 

 been- left by Claudius JElianus, who, in his " History of Animals," collected 

 without any cohesion the vague or erroneous notions which he had gathered 

 from various Greek and Latin authors whose works are no longer extant. 

 These sciences, almost abandoned, had been relegated, together with specu- 

 lative philosophy, amongst the misty conceptions of the sophists, and were 

 merely interpreted by a few rhetoricians, such as Nemesianus, Calpurnius, and 

 Ausonius, who. translated in their descriptive poems the ideas of pagan antiquity 

 as to the phenomena and products of nature. Pliny is always cited in 

 works which treat incidentally of any facts appertaining to the physical 

 world. Moreover, in these times, from the fourth to the eighth century, so 

 unfavourable to science, writers, whether physicians, historians, or philosophers, 

 merely treated of material things from a utilitarian point of view ; they 

 spoke of minerals, plants, and animals without reference to their organiza- 

 tion, their shape, or their physiognomy ; they examined and appreciated them 

 solely from the point of view as to the best use that could be made of them 

 in industry or social life ; and the only scientific classification they gave them 

 was to place them in the Hexameron, or theory of the six days of the creation, 

 according to the Genesis of Moses (Fig. 81). 



Charlemagne himself, notwithstanding his great genius, does not seem 

 to have taken any interest in the study of natural history, and we know 

 that it was not included in the course of study at the Palace School. The 

 Emperor was doubtless familiar with all wild animals, from a hunting point 

 of view ; with the domesticated animals, from the point of view of rural 

 economy, and with plants in connection with agriculture, for he paid great 

 attention to the care of his lands and gardens. Thus, in his Capitularies, he 

 lays special stress upon the good kinds of fruits, vegetables, and grain for 

 the use of the table, and scarcely gave a place for the exotic vegetables, &c., 

 sent to him from Spain and Greece. It was at this epoch that a monk in 

 the monastery of St. Gall, Walafrid Straba, described with no little accuracy, 



