38 



TO THE READER. 



And now, since I have mentioned the Society, give me leave, worthy- 

 reader, as a member of that body which has been the chief promoter of 

 this ensuing Work, to vindicate (as I stand obliged) that assembly, and 

 consequently the honour of his Majesty and the nation, in a particular 

 which concerns it, though in appearance, a little foreign to the present 

 subject. 



I will not say that all which I have written in the several paragraphs 

 of this treatise is new ; but that there are very many new and useful 

 things and observations, (without insisting on the method only,) not 

 hitherto delivered by any author, and so freely communicated, I hope 

 will sufficiently appear. It is not therefore in behalf of any particular 

 which concerns myself that I have been induced to enlarge this preface ; 

 but, by taking this occasion, to encounter the unsufferable boldness or 

 ambition of some persons, as well strangers as others, arrogating to them- 

 selves the being inventors of divers new and useful experiments, justly 

 attributable to several members of the Royal Society *. 



So far has that Assembly been from affecting glory, that they seem 

 rather to have declined their due ; not as ashamed of so numerous and 

 fair an offspring ; but as abundantly satisfied that^ after all the hard mea- 

 sures and virulent reproaches they had sustained for endeavouring, by 

 united attempts, and at their own charges, to improve real philosophy, 

 they had, from time to time cultivated that province, in so many useful 



* Consult the History of the Royal Society and their registers The laws of motion, 



and the geometrical straightening of curve-lines, were first found out by Sir Christopher 



Wren and Mr. Thomas Neile. The equated isocrone motion of the weight of a circular 



pendulum in a paraboloeid, for the regulating of clocks, and the improving pocket- watches 

 by springs applied to the balance, were first invented and demonstrated to this Society by 

 Dr. Hooke ; together with all those new and useful instruments, contrivances, and experi- 

 ments, mathematical and physical, published in his posthumous works by the most accom- 

 plished Mr. Waller, Secretai-y to the Royal Society ; and since, those of the incomparable 

 learned Sir Isaac Newton, now President of the Royal Society ; Mr. Halley, the worthy 

 Professor of Geometry in the University of Oxford ; Dr. Grew, and several more, whose 

 works and useful inventions sufficiently celebrate their merits. I do not mention the 

 Barometer, to which might be added the prodigious effects of the Speculum Ustorium^ 

 surpassing what the French confidently, or rather audaciously, pretend to ; nor the other 

 admirable inventions, injuriously arrogated by strangers, though due of right to English- 

 men, and members of this Society ; for it is not the business of this preface to enumerate 

 all, though it was necessary to toucli on some instances. 



