What has been said about Medicine holds good also of Zoology, Botany, Chemistry, etc., and in a lesser degree of Mathematics, Astronomy and Mineralogy. Fine work has been done in some of these subjects by experts who also How far did the Muslim scientists observe for themselves? possessed an adequate knowledge of Arabic. I will only instance Woepcke in Algebra, Wiedemann in Mechanics, Hirschberg in Oph­thalmology, and, amongst younger men, Holm-yard in Chemistry. All these, I think, have come to the conclusion that the standard attained by the best Muslim investigators surpassed rather than fell short of what is generally supposed. Yet it is often difficult to assure oneself that direct observation, which is the foundation of true science, has played its proper part in ascertaining the phenomena recorded. Dr Badhlu'r-Raḥmán, now Pro­fessor of Arabic in the Oriental College at Lahore, when he was a Research Student in this University, took as the Al-Jáḥiẓ on instincts in ants. subject of his studies the works of al-Jáḥiẓ, who, on the strength of his great book on animals, the Kitábu'l-Ḥayawán, is often regarded as one of the leading naturalists of the Arabs. * At my request this able and industrious young scholar devoted especial attention to the question whether the writings of this author afforded any proof that he had himself observed the habits of any of the animals about which he wrote. A passage was ultimately found which seemed conclusive. In speaking of instinct al-Jáḥiẓ says that when the ant stores corn for food it mutilates each grain in such a way as to prevent it from germinating. After numerous fruitless enquiries as to the truth of this statement, I finally ascertained from Mr Horace Donisthorpe, one of the chief British authorities on ants, that it was correct, and I began to hope that here at last was proof that this old Muslim scholar had himself observed a fact of Natural History apparently unknown to many modern Zoologists. Unhappily I subsequently discovered the same statement in Pliny, and I am afraid it is much more likely that it reached al-Jáḥiẓ by tradition rather than by direct observation.

In each of the “Arabian” sciences the same question arises and demands an answer which only one thoroughly versed in the scientific literature of the ancients can give. Does Ibnu'l-Bayṭár's great Arabic work on medicinal plants, for example, contain any information not to be found in Dioscorides? Be the answer what it may, it is doubtful Modern Euro­pean Science in Persia. whether the later Muslim writers on these various sciences ever surpassed, or even equalled, their predecessors. In quite recent times, especially since the foundation of the Dáru'l-Funún, or Polytechnic College, at Ṭihrán early in the reign of Náṣiru'd-Dín Sháh, numerous Persian translations or adaptations of European scientific works have been made, but these are entirely exotic, and can hardly claim to be noticed in a work on Persian Literature. A number of them are mentioned in my Press and Poetry of Modern Persia, pp. 154-66, under the heading “Modernising Influences in the Persian Press other than Magazines and Journals.” But of those Persians who since the middle of the nineteenth century have suc­cessfully graduated in the European schools of science, I know of none who has hitherto made a reputation for original research.

In conclusion a few words must be said about the Occult Sciences, excluding Astrology and Alchemy, which are in The Occult Sciences. the East hardly to be separated from Astro­nomy and Chemistry. Alchemy is called in Arabic and Persian Kímiyá, and the names of four other Occult Sciences, dealing with Talismans, Necro­mancy, and the like, are formed on the same model, Límiyá, Hímiyá, Símiyá, and Rímiyá, the initial letters being derived from the words Kulluhu Sirr (<text in Arabic script omitted>), “All of it is a Mystery.” The book entitled Asrár-i-Qásimi (“Secrets of Qásim”) * in Persian, and the Shamsu'l-Ma'árif (“Sun of Knowledges”) * of the celebrated Shaykh al-Búní in Arabic, may be regarded as typical of this class of literature, but to the uninitiated they make but arid and unprofitable reading. Ibn Khaldún is the only Muslim writer I know of who has sought to discover a philosophical and rational basis for these so-called sciences, and his ideas have been collated with the theories of modern Psychical Research in a most masterly manner by Professor Duncan Black Macdonald in his interesting and suggestive book entitled The Religious Attitude and Life in Islam. * I have always kept an open mind as to the reality of the powers claimed by Occultists, and, when opportunity offered, have always gone out of my way to investigate such manifesta­tions. Disappointment has invariably been my portion, save in two cases: a “magician” whom I met in Kirmán in the summer of 1888, who, amidst much vain boasting, did accomplish one feat which baffled my comprehension; * and the late Shaykh Ḥabíb Aḥmad, author of an as­tonishing work in English entitled The Mysteries of Sound and Number, * who, if nothing more, was an amazingly skilful thought-reader.