PHYSICAL SCIENCE IN SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 269 



sure of plants, etc. It is described in his Statical Essays (1727) 

 and Haemostaticks (1733). 



ORGANIZATION OF THE FIRST SCIENTIFIC ACADEMIES AND SO- 

 CIETIES. -- The Academy of Plato (fifth century B.C.), and the 

 Lyceum of Aristotle, the Museum at Alexandria (third century B.C.), 

 and the so-called Academy of Alcuin (in the eighth century A.D.) 

 may be regarded as precursors of the academies and societies of 

 the Renaissance, but with the possible exception of an academy 

 formed by Leonardo da Vinci in the fifteenth century - - the first 

 devoted chiefly to science was probably that founded by della 

 Porta at Naples in 1560 and named Academia Secretorum Naturae. 

 The requirement for membership was to have made some dis- 

 covery in natural science. Delia Porta fell under ecclesiastical 

 suspicion as a practitioner of the black arts, and though acquitted 

 was ordered to close his "Academy." The Accademia dei Lincei 

 (of the Lynx), founded at Rome in 1603, included both della Porta 

 and Galileo among its early members, and still flourishes. Its de- 

 vice is a lynx with upturned eyes. 



The Royal Society of London, like many other societies, was the 

 outgrowth of meetings of friends for discussion and was chartered 

 in 1662. (For Boyle's Invisible College see above, p. 261.) 



Among the earlier members of the Royal Society were Boyle 

 and Hooke, Mayow, Huygens, Ray, Grew, Malpighi, Leeuwen- 

 hoek, and Isaac Newton. A well-known passage quoted by 

 Huxley from Dr. Wallis, one of the first members, is of special 

 interest since it shows what subjects were most dwelt upon by men 

 of science at the time of Cromwell and the Restoration : 



Some twenty years before the outbreak of the plague (1665), says 

 Huxley, a few calm and thoughtful students banded themselves to- 

 gether for the purpose, as they phrased it, of 'improving natural 

 knowledge. ' The ends they proposed to attain cannot be stated more 

 clearly than in the words of one of the founders of the organisation : 



'Our business was (precluding matters of theology and state affairs) 

 to discourse and consider of philosophical enquiries, and such as re- 

 lated thereunto : as Physick, Anatomy, Geometry, Astronomy, 

 Navigation, Staticks, Magneticks, Chymicks, Mechanicks, and 



