To facilitate the investigations of the natural historian, there were numerous zoological collections, where the habits and characteristics of animals and birds of every description could be observed and noted for the present entertainment and future profit of mankind. The royal botanical gardens contained an endless variety of plants, both indigenous and exotic, cultivated for their brilliant foliage, their grateful fragrance, or their culinary and medicinal virtues. The portentous development of Arabic intellectual activity presents one of the most interesting and instructive examples of progress in the history of the human mind. The Bedouin was a typical barbarian and freebooter. He had no organized government, and acknowledged no permanent authority. Without a settled habitation, he despised all who pursued the avocations of peace. He subsisted by pillage. His religion was debased, cruel, idolatrous. With the exception of a few poems and some collections of tales recounting the exploits of spirits and magicians, he had nothing which could be dignified by the name of literature. It is true that his language was one of the most copious and flexible ever devised by man, but its powers had never been tested and were practically unknown. Even the courage of the Arab was not exempt from suspicion, and he notoriously preferred the advantages of ambuscade and surprise to the more hazardous encounter of the open field. Almost his sole, certainly his most conspicuous, virtue was hospitality; but every consideration of friendship and courtesy was forgotten as soon as the guest of the night had quitted the precincts of his camp. The prevalence of such conditions was, it must be admitted, eminently unfavorable to the encouragement of science and letters. The Arab conqueror, therefore, in the prosecution of his literary career, owed nothing to the usually powerful influence of national tradition and example. His first important act was the destruction of the great library of Alexandria, his second the spoliation of the monuments of the Pharaohs, and the razing--in order to obtain materials for his own inferior constructions--of the vast structures of Greek and Roman antiquity which adorned that famous capital. The thoroughness with which this work was accomplished is demonstrated by the total absence of any remains of those superb edifices which were alike the pride of the Macedonian dynasty and the boast of the age of Augustus and Hadrian. In these acts of violence he only followed the inherent destructive and predatory instincts of his race. Contact with civilization and experience of its benefits, however, soon wrought a change in his nature, a change momentous in its results and which has no parallel in the annals of human advancement. A century after the Hegira, the descendant of the vagrant Bedouin had attained a remarkable predominance in every department of polite literature and scientific knowledge. The impulse which wrought