CH. xv. FOUNDATION OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY. 125 



ances made it almost impossible for quiet and studious 

 people to live in peace. It was under these circumstances 

 that a small group of scientific men, among whom were 

 Robert Boyle, son of the Earl of Cork, and Dr. Hooke, an 

 eminent English mathematician, began to meet together 

 privately to try and forget public troubles in discussing 

 science. They assembled first in London in 1645, but soon 

 moved to Oxford to be out of the way of the constant riots, 

 and continued to meet there till 1662, after the restoration 

 of Charles II., when they settled in London and formed 

 themselves into a regular Society under a charter from the 

 king. 



This was the beginning of the Royal Society of London, 

 which has done so much for science during the last two hun- 

 dred years, and which is still the leading scientific society of 

 England. The following account of its early meetings is thus 

 given by Dr. Wallis, one of the first members, ' Our business/ 

 he says, 'was (precluding matters of theology and State 

 affairs) to discourse and consider of philosophical enquiries, 

 and such as related thereunto : as Physick, Anatomy, 

 Geometry, Astronomy, Navigation, Staticks, Magneticks, 

 Chymicks, Mechanicks, and Natural Experiments ; with the 

 state of these studies, and their cultivation at home and 

 abroad. We then discoursed of the circulation of the blood, 

 the valves in the veins, the vense lactre, the lymphatic vessels, 

 the Copernican hypothesis, the nature of comets and new 

 stars, the satellites of Jupiter, the oval shape (as it then 

 appeared) of Saturn, the spots on the sun and its turning on 

 its own axis, the inequalities and selenography of the moon, 

 the several phases of Venus and Mercury, the improvement 

 of telescopes and grinding of glasses for that purpose, the 

 weight of the air, the possibility or impossibility of vacuities 



