Observations of Albert and his associates.
In the treatise on animals as in that on plants Albert’s allusions to experience occur mainly in the last few books where he describes particular animals. Here he often says, “I have tested this,” or “I and my associates have experienced,”[1755] or “I have not experienced this,” or “I have proved that this is not true.”[1756] Like Alexander of Neckam he rejects the story that the beaver castrates itself in order to escape with its life from its hunters; Albert says that experience near his home has often disproved this.[1757] In discussing whales he restricts himself entirely to the results of his own observation, saying, “We pass over what the Ancients have written on this topic because their statements do not agree with experience.”[1758] According to Pouchet[1759] Albert gives even more detailed information concerning whales than do the Norse sagas, and also includes animals of the north unknown to classical writers. He occasionally reveals his nationality by giving the German as well as the Latin names of animals, and he displays an acquaintance with the fauna of surrounding countries such as Norway, Sweden, Bohemia, and Carinthia.[1760] He asserts that there are no eels in the Danube and its tributaries, but that they abound in the other rivers of Germany.[1761] He tells of observing the habits of eagles in Livonia,[1762] or supports the account in Solinus of a monstrous beast with fore legs like human arms and hind legs like human legs by stating that he has seen both male and female of the species captured in the forests of Russia (Sclaviae).[1763] Of his wide travels and observation of natural phenomena we shall meet other examples as we proceed.
Experiments with animals.
Albert has not only observed animal life widely, he has also performed experiments with animals as he apparently did not do with plants. He and his associates, for instance, have proved by experiment that a cicada goes on singing in its breast for a long time after its head has been cut off.[1764] He also proved to his satisfaction that the turtle, although a marine animal, would not drink sea water, unless possibly fresh water which flowed into the sea, by experimenting with a turtle in a vessel of water.[1765] He has heard it said that the ostrich eats and digests iron, but the many ostriches to whom he has offered the metal have consistently declined it, although they would devour with avidity stones and bones cut into small bits.[1766] Crude experiments these may be, but they are at least purposive.
Past authors questioned.
Albert also often expresses doubt as to certain statements concerning animals on the ground that they have not been tested by experience, even if he has had no opportunity to disprove them. And he draws a sharp distinction between authors who state what they themselves have seen and tested and those who appear simply to repeat rumor or folk-lore. That there are any such birds as gryphons or griffins, he believes is affirmed in story-books (historiae) rather than supported by the experiments of philosophers or arguments of philosophy.[1767] The story found in the Physiologus of the pelican’s restoring its young with its own blood he also considers as “read in story-books rather than proved philosophically by experience,”[1768]—a criticism which shows how mistaken those modern scholars have been who have declared the Physiologus and Bestiaries representative of the thirteenth century attitude towards nature. The accounts of harpies which one reads are also according to Albert “not based upon experience, but are the assertions of men of no great authority.”[1769] They are said to be rapacious birds with crooked nails and human faces, and when a harpy meets a man in the desert it is said to kill him, but afterwards, when it sees by its reflection in the water that its own face is human, it grieves all the rest of its life for the man whom it has slain. “But these statements,” says Albert, “have not been experienced and seem fabulous. Such tales are told especially by a certain Adelinus” (perhaps the Anglo-Saxon Aldhelm) “and Solinus and Jorach.” Albert is particularly chary of accepting the assertions of these last two authors, assuring us, anent their statement that certain birds can fly unharmed through flames, “These philosophers tell many lies and I think that this is one of their lies.”[1770] In yet other passages Albert calls one or the other of them a liar.[1771] He also sometimes rejects statements of Pliny, once classing him with Solinus among those who rehearse popular hearsay rather than disclose scientific experience.[1772]
Instances of credulity.
Albert thus displays considerable independence in dealing with past authorities. Yet at times statements in earlier writers which seem absurd to us pass him unchallenged. He is far, for example, from rejecting all of Pliny’s marvelous assertions. He still believes that the little fish eschinus can stop “a ship two hundred feet or more” in length by clinging to its keel, so that neither wind nor art nor violence can move it.[1773] And he adds something to Pliny’s tale of hunters who make good their escape to their ship with the tiger’s cubs by throwing them one at a time to the pursuing tigress, who takes each whelp back to her lair before returning to the pursuit of the hunters.[1774] Albert’s emendation is that the hunters provide themselves with glass spheres which they roll one at a time towards the pursuing tigress.[1775] Seeing her own reflection on a small scale in the glass ball, she thinks it one of her cubs until she has vainly tried to give it milk, when she discovers the fraud and bounds after the hunters again. But a second and a third glass ball deceive her temporarily as before, and so the hunters reach their ship without having had to surrender any of the real cubs. This imputation of singular stupidity to the tigress should be kept in mind to set against other passages in medieval writers where almost human sagacity is ascribed to animals. Although in two or three preceding passages Albert has refuted the doctrine of spontaneous generation of animal life,[1776] he attributes the following passage to Pliny without adverse criticism.[1777] “There is a worm shaped like a star, as Pliny says, which shines like a star at night; but it never appears except when after great clouds it predicts clear weather.[1778] He says that there is so much rigid cold in this worm that it extinguishes fire like ice. And if a man’s flesh is touched with its slime, all the hair falls off and what it touches decays. And he says that they beget nothing, nor is there male or female among them. Therefore they are generated from decaying matter.” Albert also accepts the story of the poisoned maiden sent to Alexander the Great.
Incredible “experiences.”
Albert also is unduly credulous of utterances about animals supposed to be based upon experience, although he cannot be called a mere empiricist, since he tries to test particular statements by the general laws concerning living beings which he has read in Aristotle or derived from his own experience and reflection. He denies, for example, Pliny’s statement that other animals are attracted by the pleasant smell which the panther emits as it sleeps after overeating, on the ground that man is the only animal who is pleased or displeased by odors.[1779] But it would seem that some of the fishermen, fowlers, and hunters from whom he gleaned bits of zoological information were not so trustworthy as he imagined. He says that “a trustworthy person” told him that he saw in an eagle’s nest three hundred ducks, over a hundred geese, about forty hares, and many large fish, all of which were required to satisfy the appetites of the young eagles.[1780] He also “heard from trustworthy persons” that a serpent with the virgin countenance of a beardless man “was slain in an island of Germany and there displayed in our times to all who wished to see it until the flesh putrefied.”[1781] Such reports of mermaids and sea-serpents have still, however, a certain currency. Experienced hunters said that worms could be killed in any beast by suspending from its neck a strip of citron (sticados citrinum) immediately after it had been dried.[1782] German artificers of Albert’s day told him that the hyena bore a gem in its eyes, or more truly in its forehead.[1783] Albert sometimes has a tall story of his own to tell. At Cologne in the presence of himself and many associates a little girl of perhaps three years was exhibited who, as soon as she was released from her mother’s hands, ran to the corners of the room searching for spiders, “and ate them all large and small, and flourished on this diet and greatly preferred it to all other food.”[1784] Albert also learned by personal experience that moles gladly eat frogs and toads. For once he saw a mole who held by the foot a big toad which “cried loudly because of the mole’s bite.”[1785] He also found by experience that both frogs and toads would eat a dead mole. In affirming that the custom of killing off the old men is still prevalent within the borders of Saxony and Poland, Albert says, “As I have seen with my own eyes”; but really all that he has seen is the graves of their fathers which the sons have shown to him.[1786]