SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN. 41! 



liberately to disregard a long list of experiments which are 

 useful and valuable, but to ignore the famous announce- 

 ment made by Robert Hooke, which is at once a declara- 

 tion of independence of the old philosophy, and a tolling 

 of its knell. 1 



Although Sir Kenelin Digby was of the council (and 

 then in high favor at court, being named in the king's 

 charter as u chancellor to his dearest mother Queen 

 Mary ") the Society, even before its regular organization, 

 demolished his magnetic nostrum and apparently did not 

 even think it worth while to consider the report of the 

 "curators of the proposal of tormenting a man with the 

 sympathetic powder" a committee which it appointed in 

 June, 1 66 1.. 



Among the members was Dr. (afterwards Sir) Christo- 

 pher Wren, who appears on a different eminence from that 

 which he occupies as the great architect of St. Paul's 

 cathedral in London, and of the graceful spire which 

 throws its shadow across the busiest part of Broadway. 

 He invented the first registering and recording apparatus 

 a weather-gage and clock combined, actuating a pencil 

 over a record surface so that "the observer by the traces 

 of the pencil on the paper might certainly conclude, what 

 winds had blown in his absence over twelve hours space;" 

 the registering thermometer, the pluviometer, balances for 

 determining weight of air, besides many improvements in 

 astronomical instruments; but more interesting to us is his 

 arrangement of a huge terrella in an opening in a flat 



1<( This Society will not own any hypothesis, system or doctrine of the 

 principles of natural philosophy, proposed or mentioned by any philoso- 

 pher, ancient or modern, nor the explication of any phenomena, where 

 recourse must be had to original causes (as not being explicable by heat, 

 cold, weight, figure and the like, as effects produced thereby), nor dog- 

 matically define nor fix axioms of scientifical things, but will question 

 and canvass all opinions, adopting nor adhering to none, till by mature 

 debate and clear arguments, chiefly such as are deduced from legitimate 

 experiments, the truth of such experiment be demonstrated invincibly." 

 Weld: Hist. R. S., i. 146. 



