268 STUDIES IN INSECT LIFE, ETC. 



experiments on electricity and magnetism in the 

 last year of the sixteenth century. Galileo was 

 using his newly constructed telescope ; and, for 

 the first time, Jupiter's satellites, the mountains 

 in the moon and Saturn's rings were seen by human 

 eye. The barometer, the thermometer and the 

 air pump, and, later, the compound microscope, 

 all came into being at the earlier part of our 

 period, and by the middle of the century were in 

 the hands of whoever cared to use them. Pepys, 

 in 1664, acquired " a microscope and a scotoscope. 

 For the first I did give him 5 ios., a great price, 

 but a most curious bauble it is, and he says, as 

 good, nay, the best he knows in England. The 

 other he gives me, and is of value ; and a curious 

 curiosity it is to discover objects in a dark room 

 with." 



Two years later, on August igth, 1666, " comes 

 by agreement Mr. Reeves, bringing me a lantern IJ 

 it must have been a magic lantern " with 

 pictures in glass, to make strange things appear 

 on a wall, very pretty." 



As we pass from Elizabethan to Stewart times, 

 we pass, in most branches of literature, from men 

 of genius to men of talent, clever men, but not, 

 to use a Germanism, epoch-making men. In 



