477 
of Edinburgh, Session 1877 - 78 . 
1 6 young scholars, servants to the professors ; a chaplain ; a 
chirurgeon ; “ 2 lungs, or chymical servants,”* and 4 old women to 
tend the chambers. This college was to examine all existing theories 
of nature, and to separate the true coins from those “ false moneys 
with which the world has been paid and cheated so long.” Secondly, 
it was to recover the lost inventions of the ancients. Thirdly, it 
was to improve all arts which we now have, and discover others 
which we yet have not. 
These Baconian imaginings never obtained a literal fulfilment. 
But in the next year, in 1660, immediately after the restoration of 
Charles II., they received a modified realisation in the establishment 
of the Royal Society. It is a point of some little interest that the 
chief agent in effecting this result was a Scotsman. This was the 
good Sir Robert Moray, who had accompanied the king in exile, and 
who, at the Restoration, was made a Privy Councillor, and much 
consulted on affairs of State. He was an ardent naturalist, and on 
the king’s return to London in June 1660, he appears to have joined 
the meetings of the “ Invisible College,” at one of which, in Novem- 
ber of the same year, the schemes for a Physico-Mathematical Col- 
lege were discussed, and it was resolved by the members present to 
give themselves a more definite and regular constitution, “ according 
to the manner in other countries, where there were voluntary asso- 
ciations of men in academies for the advancement of various parts 
of learning, so they might do something answerable here for the 
promoting of experimental philosophy.” Sir Robert Moray was 
present at this meeting, and in his intercourse with the king he took 
occasion to communicate the proposal to His Majesty. At their 
next meeting, a week later, he was able to state to his friends that 
the king “ did well approve of their design, and would be ready to 
give encouragement to it.” The members at once constituted them- 
selves the “ Royal Society,” and Sir Robert Moray became their 
first president ad interim. About a year and a half later, in July 
1662, the Society received its charter of incorporation. Lord 
Brouncker, who was a discoverer in mathematics, — “being the first 
to introduce continual fractions, and to give a series for the quadra- 
ture of a portion of the equilateral hyperbola,” — was named president 
in the Royal Charter. The king continued to take an interest in 
* The “ lung” was so called because he blew the fire for his master. 
