IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 19 



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 consider of philo- 

 sophical enquiries, and such as related thereunto: as 

 Physick, Anatomy, Geometry, Astronomy, Navigation, 

 Staticks, Magneticks, Chymicks, Mechanicks, 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 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 turn- 

 ing 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 there- 

 of, the Torricellian experiment 5 in quicksilver, the de- 

 scent of heavy bodies and the degree of acceleration 

 therein, with 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 6 

 at Florence, and Sir Francis Bacon (Lord Verulam) 7 in 



5 The principle of the modern barometer had just been discov- 

 ered, in 1643, by Evangelista Torricelli, an Italian physicist and 

 friend of Galileo. 



6 Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), the famous Italian astronomer, 

 constructed a thermometer and a telescope, and discovered Ju- 

 piter's satellites and the spots on the sun. His doctrines were 

 condemned by the Pope and he was finally forced to abjure the 

 Copernican theory. 



7 Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626) is usually credited with having 

 greatly aided the progress of science by the development of the 



