Page:Readings in European History Vol 1.djvu/475

 The Culture of the Middle Ages 439 such as zoology, mineralogy, botany, chemistry, physics, meteorology, anatomy, physiology, ethics, theology, law, and medicine. In the second place, important scientific observations are mixed with what seem to us the most preposterous legends and irrelevant anecdotes. Lastly, writers were rarely satisfied when they had described a particular kind of bird, fish, or mineral unless they could add a moral, or illustrate the truths of Scripture. Among the more worthy and serious of these mediaeval writers is Alexander Neckam in his work entitled On the Natures of Things. He was an Englishman, a con- temporary of Richard the Lion-Hearted, and for a time a professor in the University of Paris. In a single fair-sized volume he takes up in turn the world and the heavenly bodies ; fire, air, and the various birds ; water and the fishes ; the earth, metals, gems, plants, and ani- mals, with their respective virtues and properties ; man, the vanity of his pursuits, his domesticated animals, the dog, horse, sheep, mule, silkworm ; scholastic learn- ing, the universities, Virgil's necromancy, court life, dice, chess, and the vices of envy and arrogance. The eagle, [Neckam tells us] on account of its great 182. The heat, mixeth very cold stones with its eggs when it sitteth birds and on them, so that the heat shall not destroy them. In the (From same way our words, when we speak with undue heat, Neckam, should later be tempered with discretion, so that we may ^{JjJJ^x 1 conciliate in the end those whom we offended by the beginning of our speech. The wren is but a little bird, yet it glories in the number The wren, of its progeny. Who has not wondered to 'hear a note of such volume proceeding from so trifling a body ? The smaller the body, indeed, the greater the sound, it would seem. By such things we are taught that the virtues of