The prevailing interest of the barbarian world, at last beginning to settle into its heritage of antiquity, was with Logic. Of Aristotle there survived in Latin dress only the _Categories_ and the _De interpretatione_, the merciful legacy of Boethius, the last of the philosophers. Had a translation of Aristotle’s _Historia animalium_ or _De generatione animalium_ survived, had a Latin version of the Hippocratic work _On generation_ or of the treatises of Theophrastus _On plants_ reached the earlier Middle Ages, the whole mental history of Europe might have been different and the rediscovery of nature might have been antedated by centuries. But this was a change of heart for which the world had long to wait; something much less was the earliest biological gift of Greece. The gift, when it came, came in two forms, one of which has not been adequately recognized, but both are equally her legacy. These two forms are, firstly, the well-known work of the early translators and, secondly, the tardily recognized work of certain schools of minor art. The earliest biological treatises that became accessible in the west were rendered not from Greek but from Arabic. The first of them was perhaps the treatise περὶ μυῶν κινήσεως, _On movement of muscles_ of Galen, a work which contains more than its title suggests and indeed sets forth much of the Galenic physiological system. It was rendered into Latin from the Arabic of Joannitius (Hunain ibn Ishaq, 809-73), probably about the year 1200, by one Mark of Toledo. It attracted little attention, but very soon after biological works of Aristotle began to become accessible. The first was probably the fragment _On plants_. The Greek original of this is lost, and besides the Latin, only an Arabic version of a former Arabic translation of a Syriac rendering of a Greek commentary is now known! Such a work appeared from the hand of a translator known as Alfred the Englishman about 1220 or a little later. Neither it nor another work from the same translator, _On the motion of the heart_, which sought to establish the primacy of that organ on Aristotelian grounds, can be said to contain any of the spirit of the master.[90] [90] C. H. Haskins, ‘The reception of Arabic science in England,’ _English Historical Review_, London, 1915, p. 56.