2 Record of the Royal Society. 



ing an operator in his house for grinding glasses for telescopes and 

 microscopes ; sometimes at a convenient place [The Bull Head] in 

 Cheapside, and [in term-time] at Gresham College [at Mr. Foster's 

 lecture (then Astronomer Professor there), and, after the lecture 

 ended, repaired, sometimes to Mr. Foster's lodgings, sometimes to 

 some other place not far distant] . 



" 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, Navi- 

 gation, Staticks, Magneticks, Chymiclts, Mechanicks, and natural Experi- 

 ments ; with the state of these studies, as then cultivated at home and 

 abroad. We then discoursed of the circulation of the blood, the valves 

 in the veins, the vence lactece, the lymphatick 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 in the sun, and 

 its turning 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 Torri- 

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

 degrees of acceleration therein ; and divers other 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 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. 



"About the year 1648, 1649, some of our company being removed 

 to Oxford (first Dr. Wilkins, then I, and soon after Dr. Goddard) our 

 company divided. Those in London continued to meet there as before 

 (and we with them, when we had occasion to be there), and those of 

 us at Oxford, with Dr. Ward (since Bishop of Salisbury), Dr. Ralph 

 Bathurst (now President of Trinity College in Oxford), Dr. Petty (since 

 Sir William Petty), Dr. Willis (then an eminent physician in Oxford), 

 and divers others, continued such meetings in Oxford, and brought 

 these studies into fashion there ; meeting first at Dr. Petty's lodgings 

 (in an apothecarie's house), because of the convenience of inspecting 

 drugs, and the like, as there was occasion ; and after his remove to- 

 Ireland (though not so constantly) at the lodgings of Dr. Wilkins, 

 then Warden of Wadham College, and after his removal to Trinity 

 College in Cambridge, at the lodgings of the Honourable Mr. Robert 

 Boyle, then resident for divers years in Oxford." 



It is to this private Society, meeting partly in London, partly at 

 Oxford, that Boyle most probably refers when, in his letters to Mons. 

 Marcombes (October 22, 1646), to Francis Talleiits (February 20, 



