THE ROYAL SOCIETY. 543 



mechanical inventions ; perhaps three such persons together were 

 not to be found elsewhere in Europe for parts and ingenuity/' 

 Petty made fame and fortune by his inventions. Evelyn writes 

 in 1G55 : " Came that renowned mathematician Mr. Oughtred to 

 see me, I sending my coach to bring him to Wotton, being now 

 very aged; Among other discourse he told me he thought water 

 to be the philosopher's first matter, and that he was well per- 

 swaded of the possibility of their elixir ; he believed the sun to be 

 a material fire, the moone a continent, as appears by the late sele- 

 nographers ; he had strong apprehensions of some extraordinary 

 event to happen in the following yeare, from the calculation of 

 coincidence with the diluvian period ; and added that it might 

 possibly be to convert the Jewes by our Saviour's visible appear- 

 ance or to judge the world." Such was the mixture of sense and 

 nonsense which occupied the minds of superior men in the seven- 

 teenth century ! 



September 10, 1676, Evelyn mentions dining with the first 

 astronomer royal, "Mr. Flamstead, the learned astrologer and 

 mathematician, whom his Majesty had established in the New 

 Observatorie in Greenwich Park furnished with the choicest in- 

 struments. An honest, sincere man." 



Evelyn believed that diseased children had been healed by bap- 

 tism, and that there were other well-attested modern miracles, and 

 is careful to state that he planted the orchard at Sayes Court in 

 the full of the moon ; yet he was less credulous than many of his 

 learned colleagues. In 1670 "a plaine, ordinary, silent working 

 wench," whose arm three different times in July was powdered 

 with red crosses arranged in a diamond-shaped figure, was brought 

 to Sayes Court by friends who regarded this poor girl's malady 

 as the result of a miracle, and wished the opinion on the case of 

 an P. R. S. Evelyn was reminded of the " impostorious nunns " 

 of Loudune, France, whom he had seen, and remembered that M. 

 Monconys " was by no means satisfied with the stigmata of those 

 nunns because they were so shy of letting him scrape the letters, 

 which were Jesu, Maria, Joseph, as I thinke, observing they began 

 to scale off with it, whereas this poor wench was willing to sub- 

 mit to any trial ; so that I profess I know not what to think of 

 it, nor dare I pronounce it anything supernatural." " Curing by 

 the touch," animal magnetism, or hypnotism, was not unknown in 

 London in the seventeenth century, and " Gretrex and Stroaker " 

 is mentioned in the Transactions of the Royal Society. 



The members of the Royal Society considered themselves " in- 

 tolerable losers " when prevented from attending the profitable 

 and desirable meetings at Gresham College. " I now and then," 

 one complains, " get a baite at Philosophy ; but it is so little and 

 jejune, as I despair of satisfaction 'till I am againe restor'd to the 



