67 



For instance, at fol. 27, is an extract translated from the 

 treatise of the venerable Bede, "De Divisionibus Temporis ;" 

 at fol. 35, is a short tract on the months of the year and 

 their several durations ; at fol. 76, is a scrap on the four 

 seasons of the year, and on the planets which govern them. 



" The whole volume contains astrology, mixed with the 

 sciences of medicine and astronomy. Medical manuscripts 

 in Irish of this early period are more numerous than others ; 

 and the Egerton collection in the British Museum con- 

 tains several ; one dated in the year 1303, and written on the 

 continent.* 



" Some writers say, that Johannes de Sacro Bosco, the 

 contemporary of Roger Bacon, and who shines so con- 

 spicuously in the history of the mathematical sciences of the 

 thirteenth century, was a native of Ireland ; but, whatever 

 obscurity may hang over the actual place of his birth, it is 

 certain that he resided nearly the whole of his life in Eng- 

 land and France, and there is nothing to show that his 

 writings were ever circulated in that country. 



" Be this as it may, yet it appears from MS. Egerton, 

 No. 90, that the Arabic numerals usually, though erro- 

 neously,! ascribed to Roger Bacon, were well known and 

 understood in Ireland at the commencement of the four- 

 teenth century. The document contained in this volume is 

 very valuable evidence, in the absence of any other as early. 

 The MS. referred to contains an astronomical and eccle- 

 siastical calendar, together with a table of ecclesiastical 

 computation, all in the Irish character, and the numerals are 

 written in identically the same form as they appear in foreign 

 documents of the same period : — 



Z Z ^ Jl^ C A 8 ^ O 



" The introduction of the zero is a proof, that the Arabic 



* MS. Egerton, No. 89. t See my Rava Mathematica, p. 114. 



g2 



