MS M.81

A Book of Beasts
The bestiary, a collection of animal descriptions interspersed with biblical comparisons and moral tales, was a popular text in the Middle Ages. It is an adaptation of an earlier Greek work, the Physiologus. This manuscript is one of the earliest with fully painted pictures. " The ox is noted for its kindness to other oxen, "for each of them demands the company of that other one with whom he has been accustomed to draw the plough by the neck."