sinews – a work worthy of a Leonardo. It was also the language of one of our finest science books, the 1556 De Re Metallica of George Bauer (nicknamed Agricola, he of the brain book earlier). Here in pristine condition are beautifully crisp woodcut illustrations of every aspect of mining in central Europe. Silver ore extraction was important in those economies – Kutna Hora near Prague was built on its profits and declined once the supply ran dry. Smelting, drilling and mechanics are all shown, with hobbit-like workers and contented donkeys to enliven
“Smelting, drilling and mechanics are all shown, with hobbit-like workers and contented donkeys to enliven the Roman typed text. A book to treasure indeed.”
medieval manuscripts and early printing such as the Nuremberg Chronicle from 1493, with its multi-limbed monster men shown at the edges of the known world, and later 16 th -century medical texts). Records documenting how the books arrived here are thin, but probably by donation, bequest and purchase (as with the Hospital Surgeon bought in 1723). What is certain from the wonderful Library Catalogue of 1729, created by the very active fellow James Hume, is that many of the science texts were here by then, housed in the library accommodation of the Old College alongside its chapel and almshouses. Moved by various turns to the present new site in the 1860s, the books were gradually assembled from nooks and crannies all over the Barry Buildings before being woken from their slumbers for some to be given their first outing this term. As work on the new Science Buildings goes on around us in College, it is perhaps timely to remind ourselves that these seemingly quiet books – which we have a duty of care to keep for present and future generations of Alleynians as a teaching resource, and to delight OAs and the public alike – could once cause controversy, challenge and criticism as their authors explored the world around them, a world truly wondrous to behold.
the Roman typed text. A book to treasure indeed. The twenty or so Mathematics texts (covered in a previous edition of The Alleynian ) start with the earliest designated such book in England, the 1522 De Arte Aupputandi , in fine condition to remind us that without the art of calculation science would be hobbled. A set of artillery books we own show the application of Science to war: Machiavelli writing in 1584 jostles alongside a Civil war musket barrel reputedly dug up in the Clump – perhaps owned by a careless Royalist exercising on Dulwich Common? Who used such texts and how did they reach us? The majority of the books on show are clean copies and unlikely to have been in classroom use. The Fellows’ Library was a combination of several types of collections in Stuart England – part country house, part clerical (a number of the teachers were ordained), part academic (like that of a small Oxbridge college, such as that of St Edmund Hall), part antiquarian (accounting for
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