I ON IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 21 



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, 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 know- 

 ledge." The ends they proposed to attain cannot 

 be stated more clearly than in the words of one of 

 the founders of the organisation : 



" Our business was (precluding matters of 

 theology and state affairs) to discourse and con- 

 sider of philosophical enquiries, and such as re- 

 lated thereunto : as Physick, Anatomy, Geometry, 

 Astronomy, Navigation, Staticks, Magneticks, 

 Chymicks, Mechanicks, and Natural Experiments ; 

 with the state of these studies and their cultiva- 

 tion at home and abroad. We then discoursed 

 of the circulation of the blood, the valves in the 

 veins, the vense lactese, the lymphatic 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 on 

 the sun and its turning on its own axis, the 

 inequalities and selenography of the moon, the 

 several phases of Venus and Mercury, the im- 



