I should have been glad if the scope of this part of my inquiry had allowed me to give some sketch at least of the special workers in science who immediately preceded Newton, and some of whose lives were most pathetic and beautiful illustrations of this personal love for nature which I have tried to show as now coming into being for the first time in the history of man. Besides such spectacles as the lonesome researches of Jeremiah Horrox, for example, I scarcely know anything in history which yields such odd and instructive contrasts as those glimpses of the scientific work which went on about the court of Charles II, and of what seems to have been the genuine interest of the monarch himself. In _Pepys' Diary_, for instance, under date of May 11th, 1663, I find the entry: "Went home after a little discourse with Mr. Pierce the surgeon who tells me that ... the other day Dr. Clarke and he did dissect two bodies, a man and a woman, before the king, with which the king was highly pleased." Again, February 1st, of the next year: "Thence to Whitehall, where in the Duke's chamber the King came and stayed an hour or two, laughing at Sir W. Petty ... and at Gresham College in general: Gresham College he mightily laughed at for spending time only in weighing of air and doing nothing else since they sat." On the 4th, he was at St. Paul's school and "Dr. Wilkins" is one of the "posers," Dr. Wilkins being John Wilkins, Bishop of Chester, whose name was well-known in mathematics and in physics. Under date of March 1st, same year, the entry is: "To Gresham College where Mr. Hooke read a second very curious lecture about the late comet; among other things proving very probably that this is the very same comet that appeared before in the year 1618, and that in such a time probably it will appear again, which is a very new opinion; but all will be in print." And again on the 8th of August, 1666, I find an entry which is of considerable interest: "Discoursed with Mr. Hooke about the nature of sounds, and he did make me understand the nature of musical sounds made by strings mighty prettily; and told me that having come to a certain number of vibrations proper to make any tone, he is able to tell how many strokes a fly makes with her wings (those flies that hum in their flying) by the note that it answers to in music during their flying. That I suppose is a little too much refined; but his discourse in general of sound was mighty fine." On the other hand, I scarcely know how I could show the newness of this science thus entering the world, more vividly than by recording two other entries which I find in the midst of these scientific notes. One of these records a charm for a burn, which Pepys thought so useful as to preserve. This is, in case one should be burned, to say immediately the following verse: