.V.I //'A 1 . 1/. SCIENCES. 



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in a Latin poem entitled " Hortulus," the vegetables which he had culti- 

 vated with his own hands. Another poet, almost his contemporary, and 

 believed to be a Frenchman, Marer Kloridus, also composed a similar poem 

 upon the culture and virtue of herbs, amongst which certain nlaBMB had 

 already been remarked as most effective for curing various diseases. This 

 culture of medicinal herbs took place in most of the monasteries, and was the 



Fig. 80. Esus, the great God of Nature among the Gauls, worshipped in the Forests. Celtic 

 Monument discovered at Paris, under the Choir of Notre-Dame, in 1771, and preserved in the 

 Cluny Museum. 



origin of those botanical gardens which afterwards contributed so much to 

 the progress of medicine. (See below, chapter on Medical Sciences.) 



Though from the eighth to the tenth century the natural sciences were 

 altogether neglected in the West, it was not the same with Eastern peoples, 

 who sought not so much to embrace the vast totality of physical knowledge 

 as to perfect themselves in the study of materia mcdica, for all the sciences 



