John Evelyn, the contemporary of Pepys, has also left entries of his daily round for a period of about sixty years, made complete by a slight sketch of his life up to the time his _Diary_ commences. He came from a good Surrey stock, Royalist to their heart’s core; but owing to the Great Rebellion he lived abroad for some years, returning to England in 1652, when he diligently wrote various books. Evelyn was later made a Fellow of the Royal Society, then newly founded, and now the most coveted position a man of science and learning can attain. From that time his work embraced various scientific subjects. Amongst them he laid before the Society observations on the growth of trees, which he afterwards fully discussed in _Sylva_. The early _Reports of the Royal Society_ contain this quaint announcement: “Mr. Evelyn gave some account of the experiment recommended to him, of putting some flesh and blood in a vessel covered with flannel, in order to see what insects it would breed, and he observed that it bred nothing. He was requested by the Society to continue the Experiment.” Bacteriologists who find such wondrous products and germs in blood must smile over his barren result. As soon as the gaieties of the Park were revived we find Pepys to the fore, anxious to miss nothing. In the autumn of the Restoration year he writes: “With Mr. Moore and Creed to Hide Park by coach, and saw a fine foot-race three times round the Park between an Irishman and Crow, that was once my Lord Claypole’s footman. Crow beat the other by above two miles.” In the following year the Diarists both refer to the May-Day demonstrations as unsurpassed. Pepys was obliged to be out of town on business, and again expresses his regret at not being “among the great gallants and ladies, which will be very fine”; while one detects in Evelyn’s note the Royalist’s satisfaction over the Restoration: “I went to Hide Park” (he says) “to take the air, where was His Majesty and an innumerable appearance of gallants and rich coaches, being now a time of universal festivity.” Pepys was more fortunate in reaching the Park on May Day, 1663, but he was not pleased: “Turned and rode through the fields and then to Holborn ... towards Hide Park, whither all the world, I think, are going.... I saw nothing good, neither the King nor my Lady Castlemaine nor my great ladies or beauties being here, there being more pleasure a great deal at an ordinary day; or else those few good faces that there were were choked up with the many bad ones, there being people of all sorts in coaches there, to some thousands I think. Going thither in the highway, just by the Park gate, I met a boy in a sculler boat, carried by a dozen people at least, rowing as hard as he could drive, it seems upon some wager. By and by, about seven or eight o’clock homeward ... coaches going in great crowds to the further end of the town almost.”