Passing over several centuries during which judicial astrology is very conspicuous in the mathematical treatises which formed the greater part of the scientific literature of the times,[13] we come at the close of the twelfth century to the _De Naturis Rerum_ of Alexander Neckam (1157–1217). We find him ecstatically musing over the consonance of celestial harmony and associating the seven planets with the seven liberal arts and the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit,[14] as if believing that there is some occult virtue in that number or some potent sympathy between these material bodies and such abstractions as branches of learning and generic virtues. Descending from the skies to things earthly—the transition is easy since he believes in the influence, saving human free will, of the planets on our lower creation[15]—he tells us that mug-wort prevents the traveler from feeling fatigue,[16] and that the Egyptian fig makes the wrinkles of old age vanish and can tame the fiercest bulls once they are gathered beneath its branches.[17] He describes fountains with properties as marvelous as those of the herb or of the tree.[18] He tells of stones which, placed on the head of the sleeping wife, provoke confession of marital infidelity,[19] or which, extracted from the crop of a rooster and carried in one’s mouth, give victory in war.[20] What is more, words as well as plants and stones are found by the careful and industrious investigator of nature to have great virtue, as experiment shows beyond doubt.[21]