i.] ON IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE. 3 



in virtue of the victory of the faith of Laud, or of that of 

 Milton ; and, as little, by the triumph of republican ism, as by that 

 of monarchy. But that the one thing needful for compassing 

 this end was, that the people of England should second the 

 efforts of an insignificant corporation, the establishment of 

 which, a few years before the epoch of the great plague 

 and the great fire, had been as little noticed, as they were 

 conspicuous. 



Some twenty years before the outbreak of the plague a few 

 calm and thoughtful students banded themselves together for the 

 purpose, as they phrased it, of &quot; improving natural knowledge.&quot; 

 The ends they proposed to attain cannot be stated more 

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



organization :- 



&quot; Our business 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, Me- 

 chanicks, 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 venae lactese, 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 air, the possibility or impossibility of 

 vacuities and nature s abhorrence thereof, the Torricellian 

 experiment in quicksilver, the descent of heavy bodies and the 

 degree of acceleration therein, with divers other things of like 

 nature, some of which were then but new discoveries, and others 

 not so generally known and embraced as now they are ; with 

 other things appertaining to what hath been called the New 

 Philosophy, which from the times of Galileo at Florence, and 



