NA TURAL SCIENCES. 



"5 



de Piano Carpini in Great Tartary, became enamoured of tin.-. <lis| im t 

 expeditions, which he looked upon as confirmatory of the strangest tales 

 of antiquity related by Pliny. These fables he consequently embodied 

 in his enormous encyclopaedia, the " Speculum Naturale," not omitting any 

 of the superstitious errors of his time. According to him, the mandragora 

 .was of the same shape as the human body ; the winged dragon was capable 

 of flying off with an ox, and devouring it in mid-air; the Scythian lamb, a 

 sort of animal-plant, was attached to the ground by a stem and by roots ; and 



Fig. 86. " How Alexander fought the Dragons and a species of Beast called Scorpion." 

 Miniature of a Manuscript of the Thirteenth Century, No. 1 1,040. In the Burgundy Library, 

 Brussels. 



the tree of life, or the weeping-tree, was to be found, like a living allegory, in 

 the harems of the East. Vincent of Beauvais related wonderful stories about 

 the basilisk serpent, repeated the old legend of the tenderness of the pelican 

 towards her young, spoke of the never-ending flight of the phoenix, and 

 declared that in Scotland the fruits of certain trees, when they fall into the 

 water, produce black ducks of the species termed black divers. (See the 

 chapter on Popular Superstititiu.) This shows that natural history was still 

 in its infancy in the reign of St. Louis (Figs. 85, 87, and 95). 



Albertus Magnus, the illustrious Albert de Bollstadt, was not, perhiips, 



