THE REVIVAL OF SCIENCE 109 



terested in hieroglyphics. He studied medi- 

 cine in 1645 at Padua, and there acquired 

 those "rare tables of veins and nerves" which 

 he afterwards gave to the Royal Society; at- 

 tended Le Felure's course of chemistry at 

 Paris in 1647; was skilled in more than one 

 musical instrument, learned dancing and, 

 above all, devoted himself to horticulture. 



When travelling abroad, he made a point of 

 visiting the "cabinets" of collectors, for, at that 

 time, public museums, which, in fact, grew 

 out of these cabinets, were non-existent. The 

 following quotation records the sort of curi- 

 osities at which men marvelled in the year 

 1645:— 



Feb. 4th. We were invited to the collection of 

 exotic rarities in the museum of Ferdinando Im- 

 perati, a Neapolitan nobleman, and one of the most 

 observable palaces in the citty, the repository of in- 

 comparable rarities. Amongst the naturall herbals 

 most remarkable was the Byssus marina and Pinna 

 marina ; the male and female cameleon ; an Onacratu- 

 lus ; an extraordinary greate crocodile ; some of the 

 Orcades Anates, held here for a great rarity ; likewise 

 a salamander ; the male and female Manucodiata, the 

 male having an hollow in the back, in wch 'tis reported 

 the female both layes and hatches her egg; the man- 



