IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 15 



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, 5 

 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 " improving natural knowl- 

 edge. " The ends they proposed to attain cannot be stated 10 

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

 organization : 



"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, 15 

 Staticks, Magneticks, Chymicks, Mechanicks, 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 lacteae, the lymphatic vessels, the Copernican hypothesis, 

 the nature of comets and new stars, the satellites of Jupiter, the oval 20 

 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 air, the possibility or 

 impossibility of vacuities and nature's abhorrence thereof, the Torricel- 25 

 lian experiment in quicksilver, the descent of heavy bodies and the 

 degree of acceleration therein, with divers others 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 3 

 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." 



The learned Dr. Wallis, writing in 1696, narrates, in these 

 words, what happened half a century before, or about 1645. 35 

 The associates met at Oxford, in the rooms of Dr. Wilkins, 



