JOUENAL 



OF THE 



ROYAL MICROSCOPICAL SOCIETY. 



APRIL 1902. 



TRANSACTIONS OF THE SOCIETY. 



I 



IV. — The President's Address: On the Life and Work of 



Nehemiah Grew. 



By William Carruthers, F.R.S. 



{Delivered January 15th, 1902.) 



Nehemiah Grew was born in 1641. At his birth England was in 

 the throes of a gigantic and unprecedented revolution. Charles, after 

 vainly trying to govern as an absolute monarch, had been forced to 

 summon a parliament, which, not agreeing to his wishes, was imme- 

 diately dissolved. Another summons brought together the Long 

 Parliament, and on that followed the Civil War. The issues of the 

 contending parties were settled on the battle-field, and the Common- 

 wealth held its ground for some years. Much more important and 

 more enduring in its issues was the battle waged through the press. 

 Every subject — political, ecclesiastical, social — was fought out there. 

 The two decades from 1641 were years of extraordinary mental 

 activity. Periodical publications — daily, weekly or monthly — were 

 scarcely known. When occasion required the publication of some 

 home or foreign news, a sheet folded into four small quarto leaves 

 was brought into requisition. In our days the regularly published 

 journals supply channels for ventilating opinions. But in the middle 

 of the seventeenth century, each man who had anything to say had 

 to issue his utterance as a separate publication. The showers of 

 pamphlets that were thus sent out from the press were immense. 

 Some idea may be formed, of their extent from the collection made 

 by Thomason, a London bookseller, which is preserved intact in the 

 Library of the British Museum. It consists of more than 30,000 

 items. Natural knowledge, though represented by only a fraction of 

 this letterpress, was not overlooked. The men who met weekly in 

 London from 1645, to read and consider papers on natural philosophy 

 and other parts of human learning, continued their fellowship until 

 April 16th, 1902 . k 



