Air-Pump in England. 349 



meeting, were the exercise of Mr Boyle's engine, &c. 

 (p. 82). 

 Mai/ 1th. Mr Boyle's engine was exercised on the arms 

 of several of the members of the Society, who found, 

 that the air being pumped out, their arms were drawn 

 into the receiver (ibid.). 



1662. July '60th. The operator was ordered to carry Mr Boyle's 



engine to Mr Oldfield, in order to make the top of 

 the cylinder of it, and the sucker to meet together 

 (p. 102). 



1663. April 8th. The operator gave an account of a tench 



tried in the pneumatic engine, &c. &c. The like ex- 

 periment was tried upon two young eels, but they 

 seemed not sensible of the exsuction of the air (p. 216j. 



Those are a few of the many references to the first English 

 air-pump which occur in the early records of the Royal So- 

 ciety. From them, it will appear, that the great pneumati- 

 cal engine was employed by the members, till other and bet- 

 ter air-pumps came into use, and were at their disposal. 



During Boyle's lifetime it would not be valued as a me- 

 mento or relic ; and when we consider through how many 

 vicissitudes the Society has passed, how often it has had to 

 shift its quarters, and how limited its means of accommoda- 

 tion were for a long period, we cannot much wonder if the 

 pneumatical engine was forgotten at some of the Society's 

 removals, or deliberately abandoned to its fate. We may at 

 least, with great reasonableness, assume, that its fragile glass 

 receiver had been broken to pieces before the close of the 

 seventeenth century. The strange inverted cylinder, and 

 awkward wooden tripod, which would then remain, would 

 not readily be recognised, even by instrument-makers, as the 

 exhausting apparatus of an air-pump. 



Only one, or, at most, two engines like it, appear to have 

 been constructed,* and these did not long remain in use, so 

 that very few, after the lapse of fifty years, would be fami- 



* Continuation of New Bxperimonts, Part i., 1669. Preface, p. ii. 



