August 13, 1915] 



SCIENCE 



199 



treasuries of churches also were often pre- 

 served curiosities and rarities brought home 

 by pilgrims or travelers. "In some 

 churches," we are told, "eggs of ostriches 

 and other things of like kind, which cause 

 admiration and which are rarely seen, are 

 accustomed to be suspended, that by their 

 means the people may be drawn to church 

 and have their minds the more affected." 

 A few such objects may still be seen in 

 churches. Thus, according to Murray, in 

 the porch of the Cathedral of Merseburg, 

 on the Saale, there is a large carapace of a 

 tortoise. There are "antediluvian" bones 

 in the church of St. Kilian at Heilbronn, and 

 in the old Romanesque church of Alpirs- 

 bach, in the Black Forest. One hangs in 

 the western entrance of the Cathedral of 

 Halberstadt, and used to be passed off as 

 one of the bones of Jonah's whale; while 

 on the wall opposite hangs what was called 

 a thunderbolt — or what we would now call 

 a stone axe — kept as a protection against 

 drought and lightning. In the choir of the 

 parish church at Ensisheim, in Upper 

 Alsace, there is a portion of a meteorite 

 which fell in 1492. In the parish church 

 of Petty, on the Moray Frith, the bones of 

 a giant known as "Little John" were pre- 

 served in the sixteenth century. Giants' 

 bones were also preserved in the Cathedral 

 of Vienna. Boccaccio records that, in his 

 day, in the Church of the Annunciation in 

 Trapani, in Sicily, three teeth weighing a 

 hundred ounces, of an enormous giant of 

 200 cubits in height, were hung up on a 

 wire. From such preservations as these it 

 was but a step to collections made by travel- 

 ers and maintained for their own interest 

 and the gradual accumulation of natural 

 objects under the roofs of colleges and 

 universities. Of such collections there were 

 several of which we have record in the 

 seventeenth century. 



Certain natural objects seemed at this 



time to be especially desired. These were 

 (1) the horn of a unicorn, a fabulous ani- 

 mal which some one was always just on the 

 point of seeing, but never did; (2) Egyp- 

 tian mummies, whole, if possible, but if not 

 in part; (3) bones of giants, now known to 

 be fossil elephants' bones but then regarded 

 as human; (4) human skulls, especially 

 those of criminals; (5) horns of deer or 

 elk; (6) objects known as ceraunice, then 

 thought to be thunderbolts but now known 

 to be stone axes; (7) objects called glos- 

 sopetrce, then regarded as serpents' tongues, 

 now known to be arrow heads or fossil 

 shark's teeth. Nearly all of these objects 

 were believed to have great medicinal vir- 

 tue and, moreover, by the mystery of their 

 origin, appealed to the belief in the miracu- 

 lous which characterized the time. 



A traveler's description of the contents 

 of the Museum of Ludovico Settala, a physi- 

 cian of Milan, Italy, gives an idea of how 

 many such museums were filled in the 

 seventeenth century. "Here we observ'd," 

 he says, "several sorts of very ingenious 

 machines contriv'd for finding out the Per- 

 petual Motion, looking glasses of all sorts, 

 dials, musical instruments, books, medals, 

 curious keys and locks, fruits, stones, min- 

 erals, animals; a prodigious variety of 

 shells; and a great piece of cloth made of 

 asbestos. ' ' The collection of the University 

 of Leyden, according to a catalogue pub- 

 lished in 1691, contained among other 

 things "a Norway house, built of beams 

 without mortar or stone ; shoes and sandals 

 from Russia, Siam and Egypt; Chinese 

 songs, paper, books; Egyptian mummies 

 and idols; an hand of a Meermaide; a 

 mushroom above 100 years old; a thunder- 

 bolt and a 'mallet or hammer' which the 

 label said 'the savages in New York still 

 kill with.' " 



In the arrangement of these museums 

 decorative effects were sought after rather 



