tinguished American chemist said not long ago that he would like to
extract all the silver from a large body of lead ore in which it occurs
so commonly, and then come back after twenty years and look for further
traces of silver, for he felt sure that they would be found and that
lead ore is probably always producing silver in small quantities and
copper ore is producing gold.

Most people will be inclined to ask where the fruits of this
undergraduate teaching of science are to be found. They are inclined to
presume that science was a closed book to the men and women of that
time. It is not hard, however, to point the effect of the scientific
training in the writings of the times. Dante is a typical university man
of the period. He was at several Italian universities, was at Paris and
perhaps at Oxford. His writings are full of science. Professor Kuehns, of
Wesleyan, in his book "The Treatment of Nature in Dante," has pointed
out how much Dante knows of science and of nature. Few of the poets not
only of his own but of any time have known more. There are only one or
two writers of poetry in our time who go with so much confidence to
nature and the scientific interpretation of her for figures for their
poetry. The astronomy, the botany, the zooelogy of Albertus Magnus and
Thomas Aquinas, Dante knew very well and used confidently for figurative
purposes. Anyone who is inclined to think nature study a new idea in the
world forgets, or has never known, his Dante. The birds and the bees,
the flowers, the leaves, the varied aspects of clouds and sea, the
phenomena of phosphorescence, the intimate habits of bird and beast and
the ways of the plants, as well as all the appearances of the heavens,
Dante knew very well and in a detail that is quite surprising when we
recall how little nature study is supposed to have attracted the men of
his time. Only that his readers appreciated it all, Dante would surely
not have used his scientific erudition so constantly.

So much for the undergraduate department of the universities of the
Middle Ages, and the view is absolutely fair, for these were the men to
whom the students flocked by thousands. They were teaching science, not
literature. They were discussing physics as well as metaphysics,
psychology in its phenomena as well as philosophy, observation and
experiment as well as logic, the ethical sciences, economics,
practically all the scientific ideas that were needed in their
generat