But is the unicorn a falsehood? It’s the sweetest of animals and a noble symbol. It stands for Christ, and for chastity; it can be captured only by setting a virgin in the forest, so that the animal, catching her most chaste odor, will go and lay its head in her lap, offering itself as prey to the hunter’s snares.

Hearing, a most excellent outward sense, “by which we learn and get knowledge.” His object is sound, or that which is heard; the medium, air; organ, the ear. To the sound, which is a collision of the air, three things are required: a body to strike, as the hand of a musician, the body strucken, which must be solid and able to resist, as a bell, lute-string, not wool, or sponge; the medium, the air, which is inward or outward; the outward, being struck or collided by a solid body, still strikes the next air, until it come to that inward natural air, which as an exquisite organ is contained in a little skin formed like a drum-head, and struck upon by certain small instruments like drum-sticks, conveys the sound by a pair of nerves, appropriated to that use, to the common sense, as to a judge of sounds. There is a great variety and much delight in them; for the knowledge of which consult with Boethius and other musicians.