on purpose, because he knew their practice of
begging from all who go to see them. I saw another at work to calcine
ice into gunpowder, who likewise showed me a treatise he had written
concerning the 'Malleability of Fire,' which he intended to publish.

"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.

"The place in which th