Alexander Neckham (1157–1227)

Abstract

IN his Friday evening discourse at the Royal Institution on December 4, Sir Stephen Gaselee discussed “Natural Science in England at the End of the Twelfth Century”. It was impossible to survey all the English writers who were treating of natural science about A.D. 1200, but there is fortunately one who was widely read and a good compiler, and at the same time a personal observer of NatureAlexander Neckham, born in 1157. He was born at St. Albans; afterwards he was headmaster of a school at Dunstable, and also studied in Paris. He later joined the Augustinian Canons at Ciren-cester, where he spent the rest of his life, becoming their abbot in due course, and died about 1227. He was an author of many and various works: one is called “Of the Natures of Things”, and is partly a compilation from Pliny, Solinus and Cassiodorus; but is not without evidence of his own personal investigations. There is continuous moralizing throughout the book; but in natural science he begins with a description of the firmament, the sun, moon and stars; then the four elements; and then starts a survey of the animal world, beginning with birds. He intersperses his scientific descriptions with anecdotes, sometimes amusing, as of those of the hawk and the eagle, the parrot, and the wren. Turning to fishes, he first refers to some of the physical properties of water and then describes the inhabitants of the deep with a story about the plaice: fishes finished, he describes minerals, with an interesting account of the properties of the loadstone, and vegetables: and then the animal kingdom, with amusing stories about weasels, monkeys and lions: and finally comes to the ‘lord of creation’, man; after a talk of light and mirrors, he describes the purports of the farm-yard and the dwelling house, with an interesting discussion on silk-worms, and incidentally mentions education and the universities of his day.