Page:The Harveian oration, 1873.djvu/88

 82 the following effect : ' If I may serve Dr. Harvy (sic) I shall be most ready either here or at Leyden to do it.' (See Life of James Usher by Richard Parr, D.D., 1686, p. 510P). His well-known connexion with P I owe this last reference to the Biographia Britan- nica, sub. voc. Greaves. For a further account see Wood's Athenae Oxonienses, vol. iii. ed. Bliss, 1817. To the former of these sources I owe a second and more interest- ing reference, viz. to Birch's edition, 1737, of the Miscel- laneous Works of John Greaves, where, at the end of Greaves' Treatise on the Pyramids (pp. 136, 137), we have given us an account of a conversation between him and Harvey. It runs thus : ' That I and my company should have continued so many hours in the Pyramid and live (whereas we found no inconvenience) was much wondered at by Dr. Harvey, his majesty's learned physician. For, said he, seeing we never breathe the same air twice, but still new air is required to a new respiration (the succus olibilis of it being spent in every expiration), it could not be but by long breathing we should have spent the aliment of that small stock of air within, and have been stifled; unless there were some secret tunnels con- veying it to the top of the Pyramid whereby it might pass out and make way for fresh air to come in at the entrance below.' The Fellow of Merton was not wanting in an answer to the future Warden, assuring him, amongst much else not wholly correct, that 'as for any tubuli to let out the fuliginous air at the top of the Pyramid none could be discovered within or without.' Harvey replied, ' they might be so small as that they could not easily be