The Convocation House, the pleasant diarist goes on to inform us, was finely wainscoted. The Divinity School had a gothic carved roof, and the Schools of Physic and Anatomy were adorned with "the skin of a jackal, a rarely-coloured jackatoo (or prodigious large parrot), two hummingbirds, not much bigger than our humble bees," and other curiosities. St. John's Library had two skeletons, and a store of mathematical instruments--the gift of Archbishop Laud. New College still wore its "ancient garb," and at Magdalen the library and chapel were in pontifical order, with a double organ, and the altar turned tablewise. Christ Church Library contained an Office of Henry VIII., brilliantly illuminated, the gift of Cardinal Wolsey. The physic garden contained canes, olive trees, rhubarb, and the sensitive plant. Wadham College had become a receptacle for curiosities under the scientific Dr. Wilkins. Transparent apiaries,--built like castles and palaces,--preserved honey without destroying the bees. A speaking figure, with a concealed pipe in its mouth, dials, thermometer, a "waywiser," a "monstrous magnet," and divers objects, artificial, mathematical, and magical, crowded the Warden's lodgings and gallery. The Royal Society had its cradle in the quaint rooms over the college gateway. There met "the invisibles," as Boyle called them, "the virtuosi," as they termed themselves:--eschewing politics and divinity, and preferring to discourse upon "the circulation of the blood," "the valves of the veins," "the lymphatic vessels," "the Copernican hypothesis," and kindred themes. We may add, that music-meetings occurred in the house of William Ellis, late organist of St. John's, "opposite to that place whereon the theatre was built." There George Stradling, Fellow of All Souls, shewed himself "an admirable Lutinist;" whilst Ralph Sheldon,--a Roman Catholic, living in Halywell, near Oxford--was applauded for his "smooth way" of playing on the viol; and Ellis the host himself presided at the organ, or performed upon a virginal, or a counter-tenor violin. William Glexney, who had belonged to a choir before the wars, is mentioned as a good player on the bass viol; and Thomas James, of Magdalen, is named as holding weekly meetings in his chamber, practising much on "the Theorbo lute."[259]