184 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Though heaven itself more beauteous by it grow, 



It troubles and alarms the world below, 



Does to the wise a star, to fools a meteor, show." 



I hope that this specimen of the effusions of two of the most celebrated wits of the age 

 may not be considered as improper. 



Dry den was also one of the earliest members of the Royal Society, and was finally excused 

 from paying his arrears probably on account of his straitened circumstances. See Birch. 



The Royal Society certainly afforded some ground for the ridicule that was cast upon 

 them. Sprat says, " their manner of gathering and dispersing questions is this : First 

 they require some of their particular fellows to examine all treatises and descriptions of 

 the natural and artificial productions of those countries in which they would be informed. 

 At the same time they employ others to discourse with the seamen, travellers, trades- 

 men, and merchants, who are likely to give them the best light. Out of this united intel- 

 ligence from men and books they compose a body of questions concerning the observable 

 things of those places." These questions, so framed, were dispersed to their correspon- 

 dents in different quarters. Thus far the scheme was judicious, and was in general judi- 

 ciously executed ; but some of the questions were calculated to create mirth at the ex- 

 pense of the society. Sprat has published answers returned by a gentleman of Batavia 

 to certain inquiries sent thilher. Two of them are as follows: 



*' Whether in the island of Sambrero, which lyeth northwards of Sumatra, about eight 

 degrees northern latitude, there be found such a vegetable as Master James Lancaster re- 

 lates to have seen, which grows up to a tree, shrinks down when one offers to pluck it up 

 into the ground, and would quite shrink unless held very hard ? And whether the same 

 being forcibly plucked up, hath a worm for its root, diminishing more and more according 

 as the tree groweth in greatness ; and as soon as the worm is wholly turned into the tree, 

 rooting in the ground, and so growing great ? And whether the same plucked up young, 

 turns, by that time it is dry, into a hard stone, much like to white coral ? 



" Answer. I cannot meet with any that ever have heard of such a vegetable. 

 " What ground there may be for that relation concerning horns taking root and growing 

 about Goa ? 



" Answer. Inquiring about this, a friend laught, and told me it was a jeer put upon the 

 Portuguese, because the women of Goa are counted much given to lechery." 



END OF NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 



