38 RECORD OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY 



appointed to put order in the Society's collection of ' natural 

 rarities V 



But besides receiving the various objects that were presented 

 to it, the Society at one time employed an emissary to travel over 

 the country for the purpose of collecting other specimens, more 

 particularly in natural history.- Thus in the Journal-book under 

 date October 21, 1669, it is recorded that ' Thomas Willisell the 

 botanick Traveller, entertained by the Society, brought in his 

 collection of plants gathered in several parts of England and 

 Scotland, together with some rare Scottish fowl and fish '. It is 

 added that Dr. Merret ' digested these plants ', and Mr. Hooke 

 was instructed to ' take the whole collection into his custody, for 

 the Repository, making first an Inventory of them and producing 

 that before the Society '. 3 



In less than twenty years the Repository had increased so much 

 that a folio volume of nearly 500 pages was published as a cata- 

 logue and description of its contents. The title-page of this book 

 runs as follows : ' Musaeum Regalis Societatis or a Catalogue and 

 Description of the Natural and Artificial Rarities belonging to 

 the Royal Society and preserved at Gresham Colledge : made by 

 Nehemiah Grew M.D. Fellow of the Royal Society and of the 

 Colledge of Physitians : London, Printed by W. Rawlins for the 

 Author 1681.' The objects are there arranged methodically, 

 beginning with ' Humane Rarities ' and descending through the 

 various grades of the animal and vegetable kingdoms to the 

 different kinds of stones and metals. It presents an interesting 

 compendium from which the state of knowledge in regard to 

 natural history at that time may be inferred. 



Within the range of the biological inquiries contemplated by 



every day given in, not only by the hands of learned and professed philosophers ; but from 

 the shops of mechanics, from the voyages of merchants, from the ploughs of husbandmen, 

 from the sports, the fish-ponds, the parks, the gardens of gentlemen.' Hist. Roy, Soc., 

 1667, p. 71. In 1779 when the Society was about to remove to Somerset House the con- 

 tents of the Repository were handed over to the British Museum. 



1 Evelyn, Diary, April 1, 1666. 



2 Thomas Willisell, the emissary thus employed, was furnished with a commission 

 bearing the Society's seal and recommending him ' to all generous and ingenuous spirits ' 

 for their assistance ( in promoting a work so generally beneficial to all mankind '. 



3 Evelyn's entry of the same date is as follows : ' Our English Itinerant presented an 

 account of his autumnal peregrination about England, for which we hired him, bringing 

 dried fowls, fish, plants, animals, &c.' 



