Iceland is the last region in Europe in the north beyond Norway. In the uttermost parts thereof it is always ice and frozen, and stretcheth upon the cliff of ocean toward the north, where the sea is frozen for great and strong cold. And Iceland hath the over Scythia in the east side, and Norway in the south, and the Irish ocean in the west, and the sea that is far in the north, and is called Iceland, as it were the land of ice and of glass. For it is said that there be mountains of snow froze as hard as ice or glass; there crystal is found. Also in that region are white bears most great and right fierce; that break ice and glass with their claws, and make many holes therein, and dive there-through into the sea, and take fish under the ice and glass, and draw them out through the same holes, and bring them to the cliff and live thereby. The land is barren, out-take a few places in the valleys, in the which places unneth grow oats. In the places that men dwell in, only grow herbs, grass, and trees. And in those places breed beasts, tame and wild. And so for the more part men of the land live by fish and by hunting of flesh. Sheep may not live there for cold. And therefore men of the land wear, for cold, fells and skins of bears and of wild beasts that they take with hunting. Other clothing may they not have, but it come of other lands. The men are full gross of body and strong and full white, and give them to fishing and hunting. V MEDIAEVAL NATURAL HISTORY--TREES The seventeenth book of the "De Proprietatibus" deals with the properties of plants. The sources from which Bartholomew derives his information are Aristotle and Albertus Magnus' Gloss on the "De Vegetalibus," Albumazar, Pliny, Isaac on Foods, Hugo, and the Platearius. The text professes to deal with those trees and plants alone which are mentioned in the Gloss, but many others are incidentally mentioned, and we are thus enabled to learn the chief food-stuffs of our ancestors. The cereals of the time are wheat, barley, oats, and rye, just as at present; but the dinner-table of the day had neither turnip, cabbage, nor potato, and supplied their place with the parsnip, cole, and rape. Garlic, radishes, and lettuce were widely used, the former being valued in proportion to its power of overcoming any other odour. Flax seems to have been widely grown, and rushlights were then a luxury. The subject of trees and plants does not so readily lend itself to fables as some other parts of natural history, but we refer the reader to the accounts of aloes, pepper, and mandragora as a specimen of the tales told, as our author says, "to make things dear, and of great price."