SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH IN THE 17TH CENTURY. 3638 
It is more to the purpose to read, under the same date :— 
“To the Rhenish wine-house,* and there Mr. Jonas Moore,+ the mathe- 
matician, to us, and there he did by discourse make us fully believe 
that England and France were once the same continent, by very good 
arguments, and spoke very many things not so much to prove the Scripture 
false, as that the time therein is not well computed nor understood.”— 
Vol. i., p. 285. 
On the 13th January, 1661-2, Pepys would seem to have 
made acquaintance with what is known as “ Rupert’s Drops,”t 
the mode of fracture of which is nearly identical with the newly- 
discovered toughened glass of the present day :—‘ Mr. Peter did 
show us the experiment (which I had heard talke of) of the 
chymicall glasses which break all to dust by breaking off a little 
small end; which is a great mystery to me.” 
An astounding fact in Natural History is disclosed in an 
entry under date February 4th, 1661-2. It is to be feared that 
Mr. Templer (supposed to have been a clergyman, too) was given 
to travellers’ tales :— 
“At noon to my Lord Crewe's, where one Mr. Templer (an ingenious 
man and a person of honour he seems to be) dined; and discoursing of the 
nature of serpents, he told us some in the waste places in Lancashire do 
grow to a great bigness, and do feed upon larkes, which they take thus :— 
They observe when the lark is soared to the highest, and do crawl till they 
come to be just underneath them; and there they place themselves with 
their mouth uppermost, and there, as is conceived, they do eject poyson 
upon the bird; for the bird do suddenly come down again in its course of a 
circle, and falls directly into the mouth of the serpent; which is very 
strange. He is a great traveller; aud speaking of the tarantula, he says 
that all the harvest long (about which times they are most busy) there 
are fidlers go up and down the fields every where in expectation of being 
hired by those that are stung.”—Vol. i., p. 244. 
* This was in Crooked Lane. 
+ Mr. Jonas Moore (known as one of the most eminent mathematicians of his 
day, knighted by Charles II., and who died in 1679) was clearly much in advance 
of his time. 
t “ Rupert’s drops” was the name given to a philosophical toy brought to 
England by Prince Rupert. These are small tadpole-shaped pieces of glass which 
have been formed by allowing fused glass to drop into water. A blow may be given 
with impunity to the head of the glass tadpole; but the mere breaking off of the tail 
causes the whole to fly to dust with a sharp explosion. (‘ Encyclopedia Britannica,’ 
article ‘« Annealing.”) 
