near Naples in Italy, who first poised the needle on a pivot instead of a card floating on water, as had been the custom before his time. (See page 164.) CLOCKS.Clocks with wheels seem to have come into occasional use from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries, and one of the first is said to have been sent by the Sultan of Egypt in 1232 to the Emperor Frederick II. It resembled a celestial globe, in which the sun, moon and planets moved, being impelled by weights and wheels so that they pointed out the hour, day and night, with certainty. Another is mentioned as in Canterbury cathedral, while still another at St. Albans, made by R. Wallingford who was abbot there in 1326, is said to have been so notable "that all Europe could not produce such another." It remained for Huygens in the seventeenth century to apply pendulums to clocks. WOOL AND SILK. TEXTILES IN THE MIDDLE AGES. - As an example of the industrial history of the times the following account of conditions in Spain is given: The cloth manufactures in Spain continued to be of the coarsest character until after the marriage of Catharine of Lancaster to the heir of Castile (1388) when finer cloths were manufactured and improved methods adopted. Up to that time the cloths used by people of the higher class came from Bruges, from London, and from Montpellier. James II of Aragon- the sovereign of Barcelona, where there were at the time hundreds of looms at work making a coarse woolen wished to send a present to the Sultan of Egypt (1314 and 1322), and chose green cloths from Chalons and red cloths from Rheims and Douai, but sent no Spanish stuff; while the steward's accounts of Fernando V show that all his household were dressed in garments of imported stuffs. The great centre for the sale of wool was at Medina del Campo, and the cloth factories of Segovia and Toledo were the most active and celebrated in Castile, while those of Barcelona were the principal in the east of Spain. It is asserted that the improvement in the qualities of the Spanish cloth after the coming of the Plantagenet princess to Spain was partly owing to the fact that some herds of English sheep formed part of her dowry, and the blending of staples enabled a better cloth to be made. The Flemish weavers mixed Spanish with English wool for their best textures. During the Arab domination of the south, Jaen, Granada, Valencia, and Seville had been great centres of silk culture and manufacture. Edrisi says that in the kingdom of Jaen in the thirteenth century there were 3000 villages where the cultivation of the silkworm was carried on, while in Seville there were 6000 silk looms, and Almeria had 800 looms for the manufacture of fancy brocades, etc. We are also told that a minister of Pedro the Cruel owned 125 chests of silk and gold tissue. In the twelfth century, a very flourishing trade in silks, velvets, and brocades was carried on with Constantinople and the East generally. Even in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, the silks of Valencia and the bullion embroideries and gold and silver tissues of Cordova and Toledo were unsurpassed in Christendom, though heavily handicapped by the growing burdens placed upon craftsmen by labor laws and racial prejudice, and the discouragement of luxury by sumptuary regulations. - Hume. THE INVENTION OF PRINTING. Before the middle of the fifteenth century, printing was done chiefly from fixed blocks of wood, metal, or stone, as is the case to-day in the printing of engravings, wood cuts and the like. The introduction of movable types, capable of an almost infinite variety of combination was therefore a forward step of fundamental importance, since the same letter or picture could be used over and over in new combinations where previously it could be used but once. Until quite recently, it was generally held that the invention of the art of printing from movable types was the work of Johann Gutenberg (1397-1468) of Mainz on the Rhine, aided by Johann Faust or Fust, a rich citizen of Mainz. Of late, however, the claim of Gutenberg has been much disputed. The controversy about the person and nationality of the inventor [of the art of printing] and the place of invention resembles the rival claims of seven cities to be the birthplace of Homer. . . . The best authorities agree on Gutenberg. Jacob Wimpheling wrote in 1507 ... 'Of no art can we Germans be more proud than of the art of printing, which made us the intellectual bearers of the doctrines of Christianity, of all divine and earthly sciences, and thus benefactors of the whole race.'-Schaff. REFERENCES FOR READING ABELSON. The Seven Liberal Arts. BALL. History of Mathematics, Chapters VI, VIII, X. CAJORI. History of Physics. DRAPER. Intellectual Development of Europe. SYMONDS. The Renaissance. WHITE. Warfare of Science with Theology. A MAP OF THE GLOBE IN THE TIME OF COLUMBUS (After J. H. Robinson. Courtesy of Messrs. Ginn & Co.) In 1492 a German mariner, Behaim, made a globe which is still preserved in Nuremberg. He did not know of the existence of the American continents or of the vast Pacific Ocean. He places Japan (Cipango) where Mexico lies. In the reproduction many names are omitted, and the outlines of North and South America are sketched in. -J. H. ROBINSON, Medieval and Modern Times. CHAPTER X A NEW ASTRONOMY AND THE BEGINNINGS OF MODERN NATURAL SCIENCE The breeze from the shores of Hellas cleared the heavy scholastic atmosphere. Scholasticism was succeeded by Humanism, by the acceptance of this world as a fair and goodly place given to man to enjoy and to make the best of. In Italy the reaction became so great that it seemed destined to put paganism once more in the place of Christianity; and though it produced lasting monuments in art and poetry, the earnestness was wanting which in Germany brought about the revival of science, and later on the rebellion against spiritual tyranny.... Astronomy profited more than any other science by this revival of learning, and about the middle of the fifteenth century the first of the long series of German astronomers arose who paved the way for Copernicus and Kepler, though not one of them deserves to be called a precursor of these heroes. Dreyer. The silent work of the great Regiomontanus in his chamber at Nuremberg computed the ephemerides which made possible the discovery of America by Columbus. - Rudio. The extension of the geographical field of view over the whole earth and the release of thought and feeling from the restrictions of the Middle Ages mark a division of equal importance with the fall of the ancient world a thousand years earlier. Dannemann. Science begins to dawn, but only to dawn, when a Copernicus, and after him a Kepler or a Galileo, sets to work on these raw materials, and sifts from them their essence. She bursts into full daylight only when a Newton extracts the quintessence. There has been as yet but one Newton; there have not been very many Keplers. - Tait. THE AGE OF DISCOVERY.-With the end of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth opens one of the most marvellous chapters in all history; viz. the Discovery of the New World. At about the same time further explorations of the old world attained equal extent and interest. We have referred above (p. 174) to the Discovery of the East by the Crusaders, and now with Columbus, Magellan, and their successors, we have an even more pregnant Discovery of the West. Meanwhile, Diaz and da Gama pushed the explorations of Prince Henry of Portugal," the Navigator," to the south, and in rounding the Cape of Good Hope completed the Discovery of the South. To the north, explorers had already advanced to regions of perpetual snow and ice, so that in all directions there were new problems of intense interest profoundly moving the imagination of mankind. THE REFORMATION. - Another potent element was added to the already complex fermentation of medieval ideas when in 1517 a widespread insurrection began in the Christian Church, the most conservative and most powerful institution of the Middle Ages. This revolution,-for such it proved to be, with which the name of Luther will always be chiefly associated, soon aroused a wave of determined opposition, naturally strongly conservative, known to-day as the "counter-reformation," of which the Inquisition was one instrument. The increased importance of the art of navigation reacted powerfully on the underlying sciences of mathematics and astronomy, particularly through the demand for improved astronomical tables. The Church, even, had a strong, if restricted, interest in astronomy on account of the necessity of more accurate data for its calendar. PIONEERS OF THE NEW ASTRONOMY. THE NEW ASTRONOMY.- Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464), later Bishop of Brixen, wrote on Learned Ignorance, arguing that the universe, being infinite in extent, could have no centre, and that the earth has diurnal rotation. "It is now clear that the earth really moves, if we do not at once observe it, since we perceive motion only through comparison with something immovable." In mathematics he follows Euclid and Archimedes, coöperating in a translation of the latter from Greek into Latin, and dealing with the squaring of the circle. He makes a map of the known world, using central projection. He is said to have determined areas of irregular boundary by the then novel method of cutting them out and weighing, and is one of the first to emphasize the importance of measurement in all |