"About the year 1645 while, I lived in London (at a time, when, by our Civil Wars, Academical Studies were much interrupted in both our Universities:) beside the Conversation of divers eminent Divines, as to matters Theological; I had the opportunity of being acquainted with divers worthy Persons, inquisitive into Natural Philosophy, and other parts of Humane Learning; And particularly of what hath been called the New Philosophy or Experimental Philosophy. We did by agreement, divers of us, meet weekly in London on a certain day, to treat and discourse of such affairs. ...The meetings we held sometimes at Dr. Goddard's lodgings...on occasion of his keeping an Operator in his house, for grinding Glasses for Telescopes and Microscopes... and sometime... at ' or some place near adjoyning. Our business was (precluding matters of Theology and State Affairs) to discourse and consider of Philosophical Enquiries, and such as related thereunto, as Physick, Anatomy, Geometry, Astronomy, Navigation, Staticks, Magneticks, Chymicks, Mechanicks, and Natural Experiments; with the state of these studies, as then cultivated, at home and abroad. We there discoursed of the Circulation of the Blood, the Valves in the Veins, the Venæ Lecteæ, the Lymphatick Vessels, the Copernican Hypothesis, the Nature of Comets, and New stars, the Satellites of Jupiter, the Oval Shape (as it then appeared) of Saturn, the Spots in the Sun, and it's turning on it's own Axis, the Inequalities and Selenography of the Moon, the several phases of Venus and Mercury, the improvement of Telescopes and grinding of Glasses for that purpose, the Weight of Air, the Possibility or Impossibility of Vacuities, and Nature's Abhorrence thereof, the Torricellian Experiment in Quicksilver, the Descent of heavy Bodies, and the degrees of acceleration therein; and divers other things of like nature. Some of which were then but New Discoveries, and others not so generally known and imbraced, as now they are, with other things appertaining to what hath been called The New Philosophy; which, from the times of Galileo at Florence, and Sr. Francis Bacon (Lord Verulam) in England, hath been much cultivated in Italy, France, Germany, and other Parts abroad, as well as with us in England. About the year 1648, 1649, some of our company being removed to Oxford (first Dr. Wilkins, then I, and soon after Dr. Goddard) our company divided. Those in London continued to meet there as before... Those meetings in London continued, and (after the King's Return in 1660) were increased with the accession of divers worthy and Honorable Persons; and were afterwards incorporated by the name of the , &c. and so continue to this day."