History of biology / by L.C. Miall....

  • Louis Compton Miall
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: History of biology / by L.C. Miall...<Issued for the Rationalist press association, limited.>. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    18/168 (page 6)
    author of popular treatises of zoolog-y, which are also called Bestiaries, or books of beasts. Here it was told how the lion sleeps with open eyes, how the crocodile weeps when it has eaten a man, how the elephant has but one joint in its leg and cannot lie down, how the pelican brings her young back to life by sprinkling them with her own blood. The emblems of the Bestiaries supplied ornaments to mediaeval sermons ; as late as Shakespeare’s day poetry drew from them no small part of her imagery ; they were carved on the benches, stalls, porches, and gargoyles of the churches. In the last years of the tenth century a.d. faint signs of revival appeared, which became distinct in another hundred years. From that day to our own the progress has been continuous. Revival of Knowledge. By the thirteenth century the rate of progress had become rapid. To this age are ascribed the introduc- tion of the mariner’s compass, gunpowder, reading glasses, the Arabic numerals, and decimal arithmetic. In the fourteenth century trade with the East revived ; Central Asia and even the Far East were visited by Europeans ; universities were multiplied ; the revival of learning, painting, and sculpture was accomplished in Italy. Engraving on wood or copper and printing from moveable types date from the fifteenth century. The last decade of this century is often regarded as the close of the Middle Ages ; it really marks, not the beginning, but only an extraordinary acceleration, of the new progressive movement, which set in long before. To the years between 1490 and 1550 belong the great geographical discoveries of the Spaniards in the West and of the Portuguese in the East, as well as the Reformation and the revival of science.