INTRODUCTION 7 



this superstition was at length refuted by undeniable 

 facts. About the millenary year (1000 a.d.) faint signs 

 of improvement began to appear; by the year 1200 it 

 is clear to us, though it may not have been clear to men 

 then living, that the winter-solstice was past. It has 

 ever since been the rule in western Europe that every 

 generation should enlarge the knowledge bequeathed by 

 its predecessor. 



No doubt the observation of birds, insects and plants 

 never died out among the people, but the scanty 

 literature of the middle ages disdained to learn from 

 the people. Emblems from nature were collected 

 from Latin and Greek authors, used as matter for 

 sermons and commentaries, and carved in wood and 

 stone. The treasury of this sort of learning was 

 Physiologus, who was neither a man nor a book, but 

 a literature in prose and verse, which lasted for a 

 thousand years and was translated into many languages. 

 In the bestiaries, or books of beasts,^ where Physiologus 

 is the spokesman, the reader is told that the lion sleeps 

 with his eyes open, fears a white cock, and makes a 

 track with his tail, which no beast dares to cross ; that 

 the crocodile weeps when it has eaten a man ; that the 

 little beast called Grylio is so cold as to put out a fire ; 

 that the elephant has but one joint in his legs, and 

 <jannot lie down ; that the hedgehog sticks ripe grapes 

 upon its prickles, and so carries them home to its 

 children ; that Cetus (the whale) spreads sand on its 

 back and goes to sleep, floating at the surface of 

 the sea; that mariners mistake it for an island, land 



' See Wright's Popular Treatises on Science written during the Middle Ages 

 (1841), and Langlois, Connaissance de la Nature et du Monde au Moyen Age 

 (1911). The original Physiologus is said to have been written in Greek 

 at Alexandria in the second century, a.d. (Lauchert, Gesch. des Physiologus, 

 1889). 



