typical example of the theological treatment of natural history that was long so much in vogue. Many parables and fables in like manner deal with animals as so much raw material to be shaped to such moral end as the narrator or writer pleases. The idea that it was permissible to sacrifice a lower truth to gain a higher one, and to make whatever modification was needed to turn a good moral into one still better was very frankly held, as the goodness of the intention was considered ample justification for any aberration from the actual facts. Thus Hippeau writes: “N’oublions pas que les pères de l’Eglise se préoccupèrent toujours beaucoup plus de la pureté des doctrines qu’ils avaient à développer, que de l’exactitude scientifique des notions sur lesquelles ils les appuyaient. L’objet important pour nous, dit Saint Augustin, àpropos de l’aigle, qui disait on brise contre la pierre l’éxtrémité de son bec devenue trop long, est de considérer la signification d’un fait et non d’en discuter l’authenticité.” This simple principle runs through the whole series of “Bestiaries” published under ecclesiastical influence, and, while it gives them a special interest of their own, deprives them of any scientific value. The zoological lore of the mediæval writers was based, to some degree, upon actual observation, but was still more often largely borrowed from earlier writers, and was greatly influenced by various external influences, such as astrology. It was, moreover, a very credulous age, and men in all good faith wrote or read statements of wild improbability or of absolute impossibility; statements, too, that could so readily be brought to the test of experiment that one would have thought it impossible to gain a week’s credence for them, and yet which are gravely transferred from one book to another for centuries. Numerous examples of such statements will necessarily crop up throughout our pages, but we may by way of immediate illustration quote a couple. These are both taken from a work entitled “Alberti Parvi Lucii Libellus de Mirabilibus Naturæ Arcanis,” which was once very popular, was translated into French and English, and held in high repute. We merely quote these instances as we find them in the first book that comes to our hand; it would be easy from a score of other books to give a hundred of like character. The first of these would be invaluable to athletes if only it would bear the test of experience. “Gather some of the herb called motherwort, when the sun is entering the first degree of the sign of Capricorn: let it dry a little in the shade, and make some garters of the skin of a young hare; that is to say, having cut the skin of the hare into strips two inches wide, double them, sew the before-mentioned herb between, and wear them on your legs. No horse can long keep up with a man on foot who is furnished with those garters.” There is evidently here an idea that the