"
We may be sure that such an investigator showing in his method a
prodigious scientific progress was on the line so successfully followed
by modern natural philosophy. This conclusion is confirmed by evidence
from his other books showing that he did a great deal of experimental
work, especially in chemistry. In his treatise De Mineralibus, Albertus
Magnus keen to observe natural phenomena, enumerates different
properties of natural magnets and states some of the properties commonly
attributed to them.
In his book on Botany he treats of the organic structure and physiology
of plants so accurately as to draw from Meyer, a botanist of the
nineteenth century, this appreciative tribute. "No botanist who lived
before Albert can be compared to him unless Theophrastus, with whom he
was not acquainted: and after him none has painted nature with such
living colors or studied it so profoundly until the time of Conrad
Gesner and Cesalpino"--a high compliment indeed for Albertus for
leadership in science for three centuries. To quote Von Humboldt again,
"I have found in the book of Albertus Magnus, De Natura Locorum,
considerations on the dependence of temperature concurrently on latitude
and elevation and on the effect of different angles of incidence of the
sun's rays in heating the ground, which have excited my surprise.
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