Workdiary 19 ('Philosophicall Entrys & Memorialls of all sorts')

Content: Experimental accounts and observations from c. 1662-5

General Information

• Creation: c. 1662-5
• Hands: Hand F (entries 1-7, 11-18, 22) Hand E (entries 8-10, 19-21, 23-60, 77, 89a (first part), 597 to end) Hand H (entries 61-69, 72, 78-79) uncertain hand (entries 70-71, 73-76, 80-89, 89 (second part)-96 ) Robert Boyle (additions and alterations to entries)
• Source: Royal Society, Boyle Papers 22, pp. 1-56
• Languages: English (all entries)
• Length: 128 entries; see the note for a discussion of the complicated numbering scheme
• Format: Folded foolscap sheets. The following pages in this workdiary are blank and are therefore recorded here but not reproduced as images: BP 22, pp. 30 and 32.
• Note 1: The entries appear to have been numbered sequentially from 1 to 91 at the time of composition, for the numbers are written in the same ink as the entries themselves and in the same hand. Digits transforming these marginal numbers to 503-591 (the first two entries were omitted from this change) were later added in pencil (i.e '50' for entries 3-9 and then '5' for 10-91). The remaining entry numbers are in pencil, and thus may have been written in retrospectively. However, whereas entries 592-599 continue the numbering sequence in the 500s, which up to that point had been executed by penciling in additions to the original 1-91 sequence, after 599 the numbering sequence returns to 100-119, again in pencil. Thus the pencil numbering of 592-599 may not be contemporary with the numbering of 100-119, while the latter may be a continuation of the original numbering of 1-91. We have noted the original ink numbers among our listings of marginal notes integral to the entry, but have also indicated the altered retrospective numbers, and the numbers written entirely in pencil, in the notes to later authorial endorsements. Our own numbering of the entries follows the original sequence in ink and integral to the actual composition of the entries, taking the first entry as 1 and continuing the series up to 119 (even though the marginal numbers for nine of the entries are 591-599). Where our numbering diverges from that found in the manuscript, our notation is in editorial square brackets.
• Note 2: The last entry ends half-way down p. 56. Page 57 consists of a title-page with the heading, written in Boyle's hand, 'A Physiologicall Note-book or Pandectæ Physica begun the 1 of January 166' (the last digit is missing). It is unclear whether this lone title-page should be seen as the continuation or part of this workdiary, or connected to pp. 61-73 in BP 22, which constitute Workdiary 24. It is therefore included both here and there. See the Introduction to that workdiary for a further discussion on the content of the pages that intervene between p. 56 (end of Workdiary 19) and p. 61 (beginning of Workdiary 24)