"His Grace promised to bring into the society a piece of a unicorne's horn. "Sir Kenelme Digby related that the calcined powder of toades reverberated, applyed in bagges upon the stomach of a pestiferate body, cures it by several applications." "_June 13._--Colonel Tuke brought in the history of rained seedes, which were reported to have fallen downe from heaven in Warwickshire and Shropshire, &c. "That the dyving engine be going forward with all speed, and the treasurer to procure the lead and moneys. "Ordered, that Friday next the engine be tried at Deptford." "_June 26._--Dr Ent, Dr Clarke, Dr Goddard, and Dr Whistler, were appointed curators of the proposition made by Sir G. Talbot, to torment a man presently with the sympatheticall powder. "Sir G. Talbot brought in his experiments of the sympathetick cures." It is true that these passages relate to transactions of the Royal Society that occurred long before Sir Hans was one of the body. But even in his time the advances made towards greater enlightenment were few and feeble, when compared with the strides of science during the last century. So simple and childish were the operations and speculations of the Society in the first half of the eighteenth century, that even Sir John Hill was able to cover them with ridicule. Sir Hans had two medical successors in the presidentship of the Royal Society--Sir John Pringle, Bart., elected Nov. 30, 1772, and William Hyde Wollaston, M.D., elected June 29, 1820. The last-mentioned physician had but a brief tenure of the dignity, for he retired from the exalted post on Nov. 30, 1820, in favor of Sir Humphrey Davy, Bart. Humphrey Davy (the son of the Penzance woodcarver, who was known to his acquaintances as "Little Carver Davy") was the most acute natural philosopher of his generation, and at the same time about the vainest and most eccentric of his countrymen. With all his mental energy, he was disfigured by a moral pettiness, which, to a certain extent, justified Wordsworth's unaccustomed bitterness in "A Poet's Epitaph":-- "Physician art thou? one all eyes; Philosopher? a fingering slave, One that would peep and botanize Upon his mother's grave! "Wrapt closely in thy sensual fleece, O turn aside--and take, I pray, That he below may rest in peace, Thy ever-dwindling soul away!"