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The following is the account given in 1696 by Dr. Wallis, one of 

 the founders of the Society : — 



" 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, Staticks, Magneticks. Chymicks, Me- 

 chanicks, 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 vence lactece, 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 improvement of 

 telescopes and grinding of glasses for that purpose, the weight of air, the possibility or 

 impossiblity of vacuities and nature's abhorrence thereof, the Torricellian experiment in 

 quicksilver, the descent of heavy bodies and the degree of acceleration therein .... 

 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." 



Hon. ROBERT BOYLE. 



1626-1692. 



ROBERT BOYLE was the seventh son and fourteenth child of 

 the first Earl of Cork, and was born at Lismore, Waterford, 

 January 25th, 1626. Endowed with ample means, he devoted 

 himself to physical and chemical studies. He settled in Oxford in 

 1654, where he devoted much time to pneumatic chemistry, and to the 

 study of the weight and pressure of the atmosphere and allied 

 phenomena. With the air-pump of Otto von Guericke he made some 

 of the most fundamental experiments on the physiology of respiration. 

 At that time the " elater " or spring of the air attracted the attention 

 of the physicists. It will suffice to quote one fundamental experiment 

 in Boyle's own words. 



" Birth and Mice in the Exhausted Receiver. — To satisfy ourselves, in some 

 measure, why respiration is so necessary to the animals, that nature hath furnish'd 

 with lungs, we took a lark, one of whose wings had been broken by a shot ; but, 

 notwithstanding this hurt, the bird was very lively ; and put her into the receiver, 

 wherein she, several times, sprung up to a considerable height. 



"The vessel being carefully closed, the pump was diligently ply'd, and the bird for 

 a while appear'd lively enough ; but, upon a greater exsuction of the air, she began 

 manifestly to droop, and appear sick ; and, very soon after, was taken with as violent, and 

 irregular convulsions, as are observ'd in poultry, when their heads are wrung off, and 

 died (tho' when these convulsions appear'd we let in air,) with her breast upward, her 

 head downward, and her neck awry ; and this within ten minutes, part of which time had 

 been employ'd in cementing the cover to the receiver. Soon after we put a lively hen- 

 sparrow, which was not at all hurt, into the receiver ; and prosecuting the experiment, as 

 with the former, she appear'd to be dead within seven minutes ; one of which was 

 employ'd in cementing on the cover : but, upon suddenly turning the key, the fresh air, 

 flowing in, began slowly to revive her : so that, after some pantings, she open'd her eyes, 



