You will like to know, that less than forty years after Bacon's death a society called The
Royal Society was founded.
But, if she was pleased with these, it contained something which would have delighted the
Royal Society much more; for if a fowl with three legs be so invaluable a curiosity, when perhaps time hath produced a thousand such, at what price shall we esteem a bird which so totally contradicts all the laws of animal oeconomy, as to contain a letter in its belly?
The reader will not be surprised, then, at the calmness with which the doctor received the applause that welcomed him in the
Royal Society. He was above all such trifles, having no pride, and less vanity.
He wants to be made a member of the
Royal Society by taking ethnological notes.
Nobody venturing to dispute these positions, he proceeded to observe that the human hair was a great retainer of tobacco-smoke, and that the young gentlemen of Westminster and Eton, after eating vast quantities of apples to conceal any scent of cigars from their anxious friends, were usually detected in consequence of their heads possessing this remarkable property; when he concluded that if the
Royal Society would turn their attention to the circumstance, and endeavour to find in the resources of science a means of preventing such untoward revelations, they might indeed be looked upon as benefactors to mankind.
Very shortly after the Restoration the
Royal Society was founded for the promotion of research and scientific knowledge, and it was during this period that Sir Isaac Newton
One day, in 1721, Doctor Cotton Mather sat in his library reading a book that had been published by the
Royal Society of London.
All day amid that incessant and mysterious menace our two Professors watched every bird upon the wing, and every shrub upon the bank, with many a sharp wordy contention, when the snarl of Summerlee came quick upon the deep growl of Challenger, but with no more sense of danger and no more reference to drum-beating Indians than if they were seated together in the smoking-room of the
Royal Society's Club in St.
Anyhow, the deputation of distinguished geologists and mineralogists from Paris and Berlin were there in the most magnificent and appropriate dress, for there are no men who like wearing their decorations so much as the men of science--as anybody knows who has ever been to a soiree of the
Royal Society. It was a brilliant gathering, but very late, and gradually the Chamberlain--you saw his portrait, too: a man with black eyebrows, serious eyes, and a meaningless sort of smile underneath--the Chamberlain, I say, discovered there was everything there except the Prince himself.
(This statement is based upon experiment.) Galton, as every one knows, investigated visual imagery, and found that education tends to kill it: the Fellows of the
Royal Society turned out to have much less of it than their wives.
But the real mischief began when Brennan sprang his gyroscopic mono-rail car upon the
Royal Society. It was the leading sensation of the
Henry: you are the life and soul of the
Royal Society's soirees; but really you're rather trying on more commonplace occasions.
Royal Society - an honorary English society (formalized in 1660 and given a royal charter by Charles II in 1662) through which the British government has supported science