Page:Scientific Monthly, volume 14.djvu/68

 By F. V. MORLEY

NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD

HIS year marks the tercentenary of the death of Thomas Harlot, one of the most interesting of the Elizabethan scientists. He was born at Oxford, and went to St. Mary s Hall in times when there were "menne not werye of theyr paynes, but very sorye to leue theyr studye." The students being without fire were "fayne to walk or runne vp and downe half an houre to gette a heate on theyr feete whan they go to bed." In those times the birch was still in the buttery hatch and the proctors stalked outside the colleges with poleaxes for any "schollers" out after hours. Fines that now come from a student s patrimony were taken from his own skin. And in those far-off days in England there still survived the custom of hazing freshmen.

But apparently Hariot did not suffer overmuch from the discipline. At any rate he made somewhat of a name for himself in mathematics in that subject then still allied to the black arts. Aubrey tells of a contemporary of Hariot's who studied mathematics that he was vulgarly supposed to be a conjuror, and the scout or college servant used to tell freshmen and other simple people that the spirits passed up and down his staircase thick as bees. A jocular mind could have played up the superstition and become another John Dee. Apparently Hariot was too skeptical to believe what would willingly have been credited to him and too honest to gain by what he did not believe. But this is speculation and the only fact to go on is his appointment as a bone fide mathematician with Sir Walter Raleigh.

How this appointment came about is not quite clear. We have for it the authority of Hakluyt addressing Raleigh in 1587 (translated):

Raleigh, one of the most remarkably versatile men of a time that specialized in versatility, had been collecting experts who would be use-