Need we point out that the same may be said of his fame as a Master in astrology and alchemy? We have seen how close was the relation in which these sciences stood to the magic of the day. As to mathematics, for which Scot was so renowned, it is to be observed that the kind of divination called _Geomancy_, which was performed by casting figures in a box filled with sand, was remarkably like the method of working sums which is still practised among the Moors.[273] We may add that the facility with which difficult problems could be solved by the new methods of calculation borrowed from that people must have seemed little less than supernatural to those as yet unacquainted with the secrets of algebra. It seems probable indeed that at least one starting-point of Michael Scot’s legendary and romantic fame may be looked for in the very quarter to which we have just begun to direct our attention. There is in the author’s possession a manuscript which promises to throw some light on the obscurity of this matter.[274] It consists of sixteen quarto pages written on parchment in a hand of the seventeenth century, and contains a short preface, followed by two distinct works. One of these professes to be an Arabic original, and the other a version of the same in Latin, said to come from the pen of Michael Scot. The title of the work deserves special attention. It is as follows: ‘Almuchabola Absegalim Alkakib Albaon; _i.e._ Compendium Magia Innaturalis Nigrae.’ Now, although the so-called _Arabic_ of the manuscript quite defies the best efforts of scholarship to decipher it, this word almuchabola is perfectly authentic, familiar even, being the common term in that language for what we call algebra.[275] This then seems to afford an actual example of the way in which the Moorish science of numbers might be mistaken for something magical. When we examine the manuscript more closely the suggestion which its title affords becomes still stronger. Here and there, amid the strange characters of an unknown tongue,[276] are designs of a curious kind; parallelograms enclosed in bounding lines of red, and containing erratic figures also in red, that show luridly against the black background with which the outlines are filled. The Latin version explains that these are the signs of the demons whom the accompanying spells have power to summon or dismiss. No one, however, who compares them with the graphic statements of mathematical problems in the margin of the _Liber Abbaci_ can fail to be struck with the resemblance.[277] The one book seems, in regard of these figures, but a degenerate copy of the other, made by some scribe who did not understand the matter he had in hand, and who darkened the ground of his designs to heighten the fancied terrors of the subject.