the presumption that they wrote only nonsense
with regard to science comes from those who do not know their writings
at all, while great scientists who have taken the pains to study their
works are enthusiastic in praise. Humboldt, for instance, says of
Albertus Magnus, after reading some of his works with care:

Albertus Magnus is equally active and influential in promoting
the study of natural science and of the Aristotelian
philosophy. His works contain some exceedingly acute remarks
on the organic structure and physiology of plants. One of his
works bearing the title of "Liber Cosmographicus De Natura
Locorum" is a species of physical geography. I have found in
it considerations on the dependence of temperature
concurrently on latitude and elevation and on the effect of
different angles of the sun's rays in heating the ground which
have excited my surprise.

It is with regard to physical geography of course that Humboldt is
himself a distinguished authority.

Humboldt's expression that he found some exceedingly acute remarks on
the organic structure and physiology of plants in Albert the Great's
writings will prove a great surprise to many people. Meyer, the German
historian of botany, however, has re-echoed Humboldt's praise with
emphasis. The extraordinary erudition and originality of Albert's
treatise on plants drew from Meyer the comment:

No botanist who lived before Albert can be compared with him
unless Theophrastus, with whom he was not acquainted; and
after him none has painted nature in such living colors or
studied it so profoundly until the time of Conrad Gessner and
Caesalpino.

These men, it may be remarked, come three centuries after Albert's time.
A ready idea of Albert's contributions to physical science can be
obtained from his life by Sighart, which has been translated into
English by Dixon and was published in London in 1870. Pagel, in
Puschmann's "History of Medicine," already referred to, gives a list of
the books written by Albert on scientific matters with some comments
which are eminently suggestive, and furnish solid basis for the remark
that I have made, that men's minds were occupied with nearly the same
problems in science in the thirteenth century as we are now, while the
conclusions they came to were not very different from ours, though
reached so long before us.

This catalogue of Albertus Magnus' works