"There was a most ingenious architect, who had contrived a new method of building houses, by beginning at the roof and working downward to the foundation; which he justified to me by the like practice of those two prudent insects, the bee and the spider. I went into another room, where the walls and ceilings were all hung round with cobwebs, except a narrow passage for the architect to go in and out. At my entrance, he called aloud to me 'not to disturb his webs.' He lamented 'the fatal mistake the world had been so long in, of using silk-worms, while we had such plenty of domestic insects who infinitely excelled the former, because they understood how to weave as well as spin.' And he proposed, farther, 'that, by employing spiders, the charge of dying silks would be wholly saved;' whereof I was fully convinced when he showed me a vast number of flies, most beautifully coloured, wherewith he fed his spiders, assuring us, 'that the webs would take a tincture from them;' and, as he had them of all hues, he hoped to fit everybody's fancy, as soon as he could find proper food for the flies, of certain gums, oils, and other glutinous matter, to give a strength and consistence to the threads." Mr. Grosley, who, in 1770, at Lausanne, published a book on London, has drawn a curious picture of the society at that date. "The Royal Society," he says, "combines within itself the purposes of the Parisian Academy of Sciences and that of Inscriptions; it cultivates, in fact, not only the higher branches of science, but literature also. Every one, whatever his position, and whether English or foreign, who has made observations which appear to the society worthy of its attention, is allowed to submit them to it either by word of mouth or in writing. I once saw a joiner, in his working clothes, announce to the society a means he had discovered of explaining the causes of tides. He spoke a long time, evidently not knowing what he was talking about; but he was listened to with the greatest attention, thanked for his confidence in the value of the society's opinion, requested to put his ideas into writing, and conducted to the door by one of the principal members.