Note 497 — Chapter XXVIII · SCIENCE, ETC.

It is needless to say that Gresham College, then the home of the Royal Society, affords a wealth of merriment to Ward. It is 'Wise Acres Hall,' or 'Maggot Mongers' Hall'; but his description,[497] although whimsical, is truthful, and shows the puerility (as we might term it) of science in those days. 'My Friend conducted me up a pair of Stairs, to the Elaboratory-Keeper's Apartment and desir'd him to oblige us with a Sight of his Rarities; who very curteously granted us the Liberty; opening his Warehouse of Egyptian Mummies, old musty Skeletons, and other antiquated Trumpery: The first thing he thought most worthy of our Notice, was the Magnet, with which he show'd some notable Experiments, it made a Paper of Steel Filings Prick up themselves one upon the back of another, that they stood pointing like the Bristles of a Hedge Hog; and gave such Life and Merriment to a parcel of Needles, they danced the Hay, by the motion of the Stone, as if the Devil were in 'em; the next things he presented to our view, were a parcel of Shell Flies almost as big as Lobsters, arm'd with Beaks as big as Jack-Daws: then he commended to our observation that Wonderful Curiosity, the Unicorn's Horn; made, I suppose, by an Ingenious Turner, of the Tusks of an Elephant; it is of an excellent Virtue; and, by report of those that know nothing of the matter, will expel Poison beyond the Mountebanks Orvieton; Then he carry'd us to another part of the Room, where there was an Aviary of Dead Birds, Collected from the extream parts of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America; amongst which were an East India Owl, a West India Bat, and a Bird of Paradise, the last being Beautified with variety of Colours, having no discernable Body, but all Feathers, Feeding, when alive, upon nothing but Air, and tho' 'tis as big as a Parrot, 'tis as light as a Cobweb. Then he usher'd us among sundry sorts of Serpents, as the Noy, Pelongy, Rattle Snake, Aligator, Crocodile &c. That looking round me, I thought myself hem'd in amongst a legion of Devils; When we had taken a survey of these pin-cushion Monsters, we turn'd towards the Skeletons of Men, Women, and Monkeys, Birds, Beasts and Fishes; Abortives put up in Pickle, and abundance of other Memorandums of Mortality; that they look'd as Ghostly as the Picture of Michael Angelo's Resurrection; as if they had Collected their Scatter'd Bones into their Original Order, and were about to March in search after the rest of the Appurtenances.'