The house of Newton at Woolsthorpe, now the homestead of a farmer, has been in the ownership of persons anxious to protect it, and preserve every relic of its former occupant. Stukeley thus described it in 1727: “’Tis built of stone, as is the way of the country hereabouts, and a reasonable good one. They led me upstairs, and showed me Sir Isaac’s study, where I suppose he studied when in the country in his younger days, or perhaps when he visited his mother from the university. I observed the shelves were of his own making, being pieces of deal boxes which probably he sent his books and clothes down in on those occasions.” Two sun-dials remain which he made when a boy; but the styles of both are wanting, and one has been recently taken from the wall to be presented to the Royal Society. The room in which he was born has the following inscription upon a tablet of white marble: “Sir Isaac Newton, son of John Newton, Lord of the Manor of Woolsthorpe, was born in this room on the 25th of December, 1642.” The apple-tree, the fall of one of the apples of which, according to tradition, drew his attention to the subject of gravity, was blown down by a gale some years ago, and a chair was constructed out of its timber. The Royal Society of London possesses his telescope; the Royal Society of Edinburgh the door of his book-case; and Trinity College, Cambridge, has a lock of his silver white hair. While the foundations of physical astronomy were laid by Newton, his confidant and friend, the brilliant and active Halley, pursued a remarkably successful career in the practical departments of the science. Born in mercantile life, yet independent of it through the wealth amassed by his father, he early embarked his means and energies in the advancement of observation. Leaving Hevelius and Flamstead to keep guard over the northern hemisphere, he sailed to St. Helena to inspect the southern; and in honor of the reigning monarch who patronized the expedition, the oak which had screened him from his pursuers after the battle of Worcester, was raised to a place in the skies, forming the constellation Robur Carolinum. The object of the voyage was to determine the absolute and relative positions of the stars invisible to the European eye; but owing to the unpropitious climate of the island, only a catalogue of 360 was made after more than a year’s residence. Upon this voyage the oscillations of the pendulum were observed to decrease in number as the instrument approached the equator; a fact noticed a few years previous by Richer, and explained by Newton to result from the greater intensity of centrifugal force there, proportionably diminishing the force of gravity. The life of Halley was remarkable for locomotion, devoted to various scientific objects. He was twice at St. Helena, twice in the Adriatic, once in the West Indies, now with Newton in his study at Cambridge, anon with Hevelius in his