extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, and placing them in her- 

 metically sealed vials, in order to let them out in raw, inclement 

 weather. Other projects were the softening of marble into pillows 

 and pincushions, petrifying the hoofs of a living horse to preserve 

 them from foundering, whilst a famous project was that of a most 

 ingenious architect for building houses by beginning at the roof and 

 working downwards to the foundation. Likewise Goldsmith, who 

 depicts the opinion of a certain town, visited by his Citizen of the 

 World, in the following letter, written to Fum Hoan, first president 

 of the Ceremonial Academy at Pekin : " I am amused, my dear Fum, 

 with the labours of the learned here. One shall write you a whole 

 folio on the dissection of a caterpillar. Another shall swell his works 

 with a description of the plumage on the wing of a butterfly; a third 

 shall see a little world on a peach leaf, and publish a book to de- 

 scribe what his readers might see more clearly in two minutes only 

 by being furnished with eyes and a microscope. Yet, believe me, 

 my friend, ridiculous as these men are to the world, they set up as 

 objects 'of esteem for each other. They have particular places 

 appointed for their meetings, in which one shows his cockle-shell 

 and is praised by all the society, another produces his powder, makes 

 some experiments that result in nothing, and comes off with ad- 

 miration and applause; a third comes out with the important dis- 

 covery of some new process in the skeleton of a mole, and is set down 

 as the accurate and sensible; whilst one, still more fortunate than 

 the rest, by pickling, potting and preserving monsters, rises into 

 unbounded reputation. < 



The labours of such men, instead of being calculated to amuse 

 the public, are laid out only in diverting each other. The world 

 becomes very little the better or wiser, for knowing what is the 

 peculiar food of an insect that is itself the food of another, which 

 in its turn is eaten by a third ; but there are men who have studied 

 themselves into a habit of investigating and admiring such minu- 

 tiae. To these, such objects are pleasing." 1 



The men who belong to this new movement called themselves 

 students of natural philosophy, using the phrase in its general sense 

 as equivalent to a science of nature. With philosophy, which, as 

 a final task, endeavours to form a world-theory, they were not con- 



1 Letter LXXXIX. 



70 



