Page:William Petty - Economic Writings (1899) vol 1.djvu/30

xxii the new philosophy to the venerable home of the old, they there found in Petty an enthusiastic colleague. Their Oxford meetings were held first in his lodgings at the apothecary's because of the convenience of examining drugs and the like when there was an occasion, "and after his removal to Ireland (though not so constantly) at the lodgings of Dr Wilkins ." Those of the company who remained in London meanwhile continued their inquiries in a somewhat desultory manner until the Restoration brought back to the city the more prominent members of the Oxford branch, when it became necessary to change their place of meeting from the Bull's Head to the halls of Gresham College. Here the reunited company was in the habit of assembling for the discussion of questions in natural philosophy. They met regularly on Wednesdays and Thursdays, after the astronomy lectures of Christopher Wren and the geometry lectures of Lawrence Rooke, and on Wednesday, the 28th of November, 1660, after Wren's lecture, the conversation chancing to turn upon foreign institutions for promoting physico-mathematical experimental learning, the company then present, of whom Petty was one, resolved to improve this meeting to a more regular way of debating things and that they might do something answerable and according to the manner in other countryes for the promoting of experimental philosophy. Among those who, in pursuance of this plan, were invited to read papers before the association thus informally organized, Petty's name appears repeatedly and when, with fitting circumstance, the association was incorporated (15 July, 1662) as the Royal Society for Improving of Natural Knowledge, he was named a charter member of its council.

Petty's famous plan for a "double bottomed" vessel, a sort of catamaran, which should excel in swiftness, weatherliness and stability any "single body" afloat, was probably set forth in one of his papers before the Society. To demonstrate the correctness of