INFLUENCE OF LEARNED SOCIETIES ON RESEARCH. 285 



nomy, navigation, staticks, magneticks, chymicks, mecha- 

 nicks, 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 lactse, 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 turn- 

 ing 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 the air, the possibility or impossi- 

 bility of vacuities and Nature's abhorrence thereof, the 

 Torricellian experiment in quicksilver, the descent of 

 heavy bodies and the degrees 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 they now are, with other things 

 appertaining to what hath been called the New Philo- 

 sophy which from the times of Galileo at Florence and 

 Sir Francis Bacon (Lord Verulam) in England, hath been 

 cultivated in Italy, France, Germany, and other parts 

 abroad, as well as with us in England.' l 



' It was Prince Leopold who was the life and soul of 

 the " Accademia del Cimento." This Mecaenas of science 

 facilitated the publication of the most useful and distin- 

 guished works, he gave his advice and assistance towards 

 the reprinting of the old works on geometry, he arranged 

 and watched over the collection of Galileo's works, and of 

 the scientific essays of Padre Castelli, he urged Torricelli 

 to make public the mathematical definitions of inertia, 



Buckley, Short History of Natural Soie 



