SCOT AT TOLEDO 61 



and western world, there is an entirely different 

 understanding of the whole subject. A different 

 principle of arrangement is at work, and results in 

 Ihe wide diversity of manner which strikes us as 

 soon as we open the De Animalibus or the Abbre- 

 viatio. We find ourselves in the presence of a 

 system of ideas, more or less abstract, which a 

 wealth of facts derived from keen and wide obser- 

 vation of the world of nature is employed to illus- 

 trate. There is a finer division than with us. 

 The unit in these works is not the species nor even 

 the individual, but some single part or passion. 

 This the author follows through all he knew of the 

 multitudinous maze of nature, comparing and dis- 

 cerning and recording with a bizarrerie which comes 

 to resemble nothing so much as the fantastic dance 

 of form and colour in a kaleidoscope. 



' Birds/ says Avicenna, 1 ' have a way of life that 

 is peculiar to themselves. Those that are long- 

 necked drink by the mouth, then lift their head till 

 the water runs down their neck. The reason of this 

 is that their neck is long and narrow, so that they 

 cannot satisfy their thirst by putting beak in water 

 and straightway drinking. There is, however, a 

 great difference between different birds in their 

 way of drinking, and the mountain hog loveth roots 

 to which his tusk helpeth, wherewith he turneth up 

 the ground and breaketh out the roots. Six days 

 or thereabout are proper for his fattening, wherein 

 he drinketh not for three, and there are some who 

 feed their hogs and yet will not water them for 

 perchance seven days on end. And in their fatten- 

 / 



1 P. 13, recto et verso, in the undated fifteenth century edition of the 

 A bbreviatio. 



