[49] Gilbert was surgeon to Queen Elizabeth and James I., and died in 1603. Whewell justly assigns him an important place among the “practical reformers of the physical sciences.” He adopted the Copernican doctrine, which Lord Bacon’s inferior aptitude for physical research led him to reject. [50] This illustration, it will be seen, does not literally correspond with the details which precede it. [51] Mr. Crosse gave to the meeting a general invitation to Fyne Court; one of the first to accept which was Sir Richard Phillips, who, on his return to Brighton, described in a very attractive manner, at the Sussex Institution, Mr. Crosse’s experiments and apparatus; a report of which being communicated to the _Brighton Herald_, was quoted in the _Literary Gazette_, and thence copied generally into the newspapers of the day. [52] These experiments were performed at the expense of the Royal Society, and cost 10_l._ 5_s._ 6_d._ In the Paper detailing the experiments, printed in the 45th volume of the _Philosophical Transactions_, occurs the first mention of Dr. Franklin’s name, and of his theory of positive and negative electricity.--_Weld’s Hist. Royal Soc._ vol. i. p. 467. [53] In this year Andrew Crosse said: “I prophesy that by means of the electric agency we shall be enabled to communicate our thoughts instantaneously with the uttermost parts of the earth.” [54] To which paper the writer is indebted for many of these details. [55] These illustrations have been in the main selected and abridged from papers in the _Companion to the Almanac_, 1858, and the _Penny Cyclopædia_, 2d supp. [56] Newton was, however, much pestered with inquirers; and a Correspondent of the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, in 1784, relates that he once had a transient view of a Ms. in Pope’s handwriting, in which he read a verified anecdote relating to the above period. Sir Isaac being often interrupted by ignorant pretenders to the discovery of the longitude, ordered his porter to inquire of every stranger who desired admission whether he came about the longitude, and to exclude such as answered in the affirmative. Two lines in Pope’s Ms., as the Correspondent recollects, ran thus: “‘Is it about the longitude you come?’ The porter asks: ‘Sir Isaac’s not at home.’” [57] In trying the merits of Harrison’s chronometers, Dr. Maskelyne acquired that knowledge of the wants of nautical astronomy which afterwards led to the formation of the Nautical Almanac. [58] A slight electric shock is given to a man at a certain portion of the skin; and he is directed the moment he feels the stroke to make a certain motion, as quickly as he possibly can, with the hands or with the teeth, by which the time-measuring current is interrupted. [59] Through the calculations of M. Le Verrier. GENERAL INDEX Abodes of the Blest, 58. Acarus of Crosse and Weeks, 218. Accuracy of Chinese Observers, 159. Adamant, What was it?, 123. Aeronautic Voyage, Remarkable, 169.