CH. VI ir. ROGER BACON. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



SCIENCE OF THE MIDDLE AGES (CONTINUED). 



Roger Bacon — His *Opus Majus' — His Explanation of the Rainbow - 

 He makes Gunpowder — Studies Gases — Proves a Candle will not 

 burn without Air — His Description of a Telescope — Speaks of 

 Ships going without Sails — Flavio Gioja invents the Mariner's 

 Compass — Greeks knew of the Power of the Loadstone to attract 

 Iron — Use of the Compass in discovering new lands — Invention 

 of Printing — Columbus discovers America — Vasco de Gama sees 

 the Stars of the Southern Hemisphere — Magellan's ship sails 

 round the World — Inventions of Leonardo da Vinci. 



We must now return to Europe, where the nations were 

 struggling out of the Dark Ages; and though there were 

 many learned men in the monasteries, very few of them paid 

 any attention to science: while those who did, often lost their 

 time in alchemy, trying to make gold ; or in astrology, pre- 

 tending to foretell events by the stars. 



Eoger Bacon, 1214. — In the year 12 14, however, a man 

 was born in England whom every Englishman ought to 

 admire and revere, because in those benighted times he gave 

 up his whole life to the study of the works of nature, and 

 suffered imprisonment in the cause of science. This was 

 Roger Bacon, a great alchemist, who was born at Ilch ester 

 in Somersetshire, educated at Oxford and Paris, and then 

 became a friar of the order of St. Francis. For this reason 

 he is often called Friar Bacon. Bacon's great work, called 

 the * Opus Majus,' is written in such strange language that it 



