FIRST BEGINNINGS OF THE SOCIETY 5 



' These meetings we held sometimes at Dr. Goddards lodgings 

 in Wood Street (or some convenient place near), on occasion of 

 his keeping an operator in his house for grinding glasses for 

 telescopes and microscopes ; sometimes at a convenient place 

 [The Bull Head] in Cheapside, and [in term-time] at Gresham 

 College [at Mr. Foster's lecture (then Astronomer Professor there) , 

 and, after the lecture ended, repaired, sometimes to Mr. Foster's 

 lodgings, sometimes to some other place not far distant]. 



' 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, Mechan- 

 icks, and Natural Experiment* ; with the state of these studies, as 

 then cultivated at home and abroad. We then discoursed of the 

 circulation of the blood, the valves in the Veins, the Vence Lactece, 

 the Lymphatick 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 in 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 degrees of Acceleration 

 therein ; and 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 Sir Francis Bacon (Lord Verulam) 

 in England, hath been much cultivated in Italy, France, Germany, 

 and other parts abroad, as well as with us in England. 



' About the year 1648-9, some of our company being removed 

 to Oxford (first Dr. Wilkins, then I, and soon after Dr. Goddard) 

 our company divided. Those in London continued to meet there 

 as before (and we with them, when we had occasion to be there), 

 and those of us at Oxford, with Dr. Ward (since Bishop of 

 Salisbury), Dr. Ralph Bathurst (now President of Trinity College 

 in Oxford), Dr. Petty (since Sir William Petty), Dr. Willis (then 



