To penetrate into the Causes of these strange Reciprocations of the Tides, would require exact descriptions of the Situation, Shape, and Extent of every piece of the adjacent Coasts of Eust and Herris; the Rocks, Sands, Shelves, Promontorys, Bays, Lakes, Depths, and other Circumstances, which I cannot now set down with any certainty, or accurateness; seeing, they are to be found in no Map.
He had drawn a map himself some years earlier, but it was gone. ‘Not having copied [it], I cannot adventure to beat it out again.’
As often as they could be arranged, experiments were performed for the assembled virtuosi. Brouncker prosecuted his experiment of the recoiling of guns, Wren his experiment of the pendulum, William Croone his experiment with bladders and water. When Robert Hooke took charge of experiments, they came with some regularity. Even so, many more experiments were described, or wished for, than were carried out at meetings. The grist of the meetings was discourse – animated and edifying. They loved to talk, these men.
They talked about ‘magnetical cures’ and ‘sympathetical cures’ and the possibility of ‘tormenting a man with the sympathetic powder’. They talked about spontaneous equivocal generation: ‘whether all animals, as well vermin and insects as others, are produced by certain seminal principles, determined to bring forth such and no other kinds. Some of the members conceived, that where the animal itself does not immediately furnish the seed, there may be such seeds, or something analogous to them, dispersed through the air, and conveyed to such matter as is fit and disposed to ferment with it, for the production of this or that kind of animal.’ They talked about minerals discovered under ground, in ‘veins’, wondering whether they grew there or had existed since the creation. Some suggested that metals and stones were produced ‘by certain subterraneous juices…passing through the veins of the earth’.
They talked about why it was hotter in summer than in winter; no one knew, but George Ent had a theory. It was ordered to be registered in a ‘book of theories, which was directed to be provided’. George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham, newly admitted to the Society, produced what he promised was the horn of a unicorn. Legend had it that a circle drawn with such a thing would keep a spider trapped until it died, so they performed the experiment: ‘A circle was made with powder of unicorn’s horn, and a spider set in the middle of it, but it immediately ran out. The trial being repeated several times, the spider once made some stay on the powder.’
Still, the discourse was liberating. ‘Their first purpose,’ said Thomas Sprat, writing his ‘history’ of the Society when it was barely fledged, ‘was no more, than onely the satisfaction of breathing a freer air, and of conversing in quiet one with another, without being ingag’d in the passions, and madness of that dismal Age’. The rules were clear: nothing about God; nothing about politics; nothing about ‘News (other than what concern’d our business of Philosophy)’. And what news was that? John Wallis specified, ‘as Physick, Anatomy, Geometry, Astronomy, Navigation, Statics, Mechanics, and Natural Experiments’.
James Long, newly admitted in April 1663, delivered the news, as the amanuensis reported in his minutes, ‘that there were ermines in England’. He promised to produce some. ‘He mentioned also, that bay-salt being thrown upon toads would kill them…he made mention likewise of a kind of stones with natural screws, and promised to show some of them.’
At the next meeting, Long talked about the generation of ants: they come out of pods full of eggs. He added that he had seen a maggot under a stag’s tongue; that land-newts are more noxious than water newts; and that toads become venomous in hot weather and in hot countries such as Italy. Croone mentioned that he had seen a viper with a young one in its belly, and Long added, ‘The female viper hath four teeth, two above and two below; but the male only two and those above.’ Hooke showed some new drawings he had made from observations with his microscope, including a spider with six eyes – lately he had been bringing something new to almost every meeting. Moray described a watch with particularly hard steel, which reminded Long that he had once seen a breast-piece so tough that a pistol bullet only dented it.
Long was a military man, having been first a captain and then colonel of horse in a Royalist regiment. John Aubrey describes him as a good swordsman and horseman and a devotee of ‘astrology, witchcraft and natural magic’. He does seem to have found him rather voluble – ‘an admirable extempore orator for a harangue’. They went hawking together, and what Aubrey recalled was that Long never stopped gabbing. He certainly found his voice at the Royal Society. The minute-taker sometimes sounds weary:
Col. Long having related divers considerable observations of his concerning insects…
…said, that an iron back in a chimney well heated, useth to make a noise like that of bell-metal.
…observed, that a bean cut into two or three pieces produces good beans.
…desired farther time to make his collection of insects for a present to the society.
…mentioned, that a lady had…
…related, that a cornet in Scotland…
…mentioned, that he had known wheat…
Until finally, ‘having discoursed of his opinion concerning the smut of corn, viz., that it proceeds from the root, and not the mildew, [Long] was desired to give his discourse in writing’.
In these first years a great many animals were cut up, poisoned, or suffocated. ‘It is a most acceptable thing to hear their discourse, and see their experiments,’ wrote Samuel Pepys in his diary, and he seemed particularly drawn to experiments involving cats and dogs. ‘…And so out to Gresham College, and saw a cat killed with the Duke of Florence’s poyson, and saw it proved that the oyle of tobacco drawn by one of the Society do the same effect…I saw also an abortive child preserved in spirits of salt.’
…And anon to Gresham College, where, among other discourse, there was tried the great poyson of Maccassa upon a dogg, but it had no effect all the time we sat there.
Then to Gresham College, and there did see a kitling killed almost quite…
Chickens were ‘choked’ and fish were ‘gagged’. The members strangled dogs and dissected living cats. Not all had the stomach for these experiments. Robert Boyle did, and he took pride in this. ‘I have been so far from that effeminate squeamishness, that one of the philosophical treatises, for which I have been gathering experiments, is of the nature and use of dungs,’ he boasted. ‘I have not been so nice, as to decline dissecting dogs, wolves, fishes, and even rats and mice, with my own hands. Nor, when I am in my laboratory, do I scruple with them naked to handle lute and charcoal.’ The Society’s armoury of mechanical instruments was small in these early years, but one that proved endlessly useful was Boyle’s air pump, or ‘pneumatical engine’. Among the items placed in glass vessels, from which the air was then exhausted, were birds, mice, ducks, vipers, frogs, oysters and crawfish. Typical experiments would bring the creatures ‘to Deaths door’, whereupon the Society would observe gasping, vomiting and convulsions. Respiration held many mysteries; so did the circulation of the blood. An experiment could last for many hours or could end in seconds: ‘I have this to alledge,’ wrote Boyle, ‘that, having in the presence of some Virtuosi provided for the nonce a very small Receiver, wherein yet a Mouse could live sometime, if the Air were left in it, we were able to evacuate it in one suck, and by that advantage we were enabled, to the wonder of the Beholders, to kill the Animal in less than half a minute.’ The experimentation was not, for some time, organised or systematic; sometimes the wonder of the beholders was the chief result. The Philosophical Transactions served as a progenitor of Ripley’s Believe It or Not as well as the Physical Review.
‘There
