Bestiaries have had a bad press. So far as I can discover, the only zoologist other than myself who has studied them is Wilma George, who, in two papers (George, 1981; 1985) has shown that most of the creatures described in them occur in the countries where the appropriate version was probably composed. Neither Singer in his Short History of Biology (1931) nor Lanham in Origins of Modern Biology (1968) mentions them. Even Raven, in English Naturalists from Neckham to Ray (1947), writes 'the Bestiary .... has, so M R James declares, "no scientific or literary merits whatever"', and approves this judgment. But James, great scholar though he was, thought that a horse had cloven hooves, so was hardly competent to express an opinion on zoology. In view of this widespread ignorance, it is necessary to say something about bestiaries in general. They are some of the commonest medieval illustrated manuscripts after Bibles and psalters, and exist in various forms, always containing several chapters each dealing with a mammal, bird or other animal, usually containing too some more general matter and, sometimes containing accounts of minerals and occasional natural wonders. - [Author]

Language: English

ISSN: 0260-9541; OCLC: 31369950