Workdiary 21 ('Promiscuous Experiments, Observations & Notes')

Content: Recipes, experimental observations and accounts of natural and supernatural phenomena from travellers and virtuosi from the late 1660s and very early 1670s (with some recopied experimental data dating from 1659-61); informants include Henry Stubbe, Edward Browne, John Prowd, Andrew Parrick, John Harrington, and several others

General Information

• Creation: late 1660's and very early 1670s.
• Hands: Hand E (entries 203, 213-22, 227-229a, 230-235, 284-296, 299-317, 325, 520-522, 559-564, 580-589, 597-611, 645-648, 653-658, 666, 675, 676-680, 737-745) Hand F (entries 201-2, 204-12, 223-226, 229b, 236-237, 247-249) Hand G (entries 297-298, 318-324, 326-330, 579, 612-644, 649-652, 659-665, 667-674, 675a, 681-717) Hand J (entries 238-246, 250-261) Hand K (entries 262-283, 590-596, 722-736, 746-769) Hand Q (entries 331-363) Hand R (entries 501-519, 523-558, 565-578) Frederick Slare (entries 364-376, 395-424, 718-20) Robin Bacon (entries 337-9a, 359a, 361a, 401-2a, 404a and 708a) Robert Boyle (frequent insertions and additions to entries) uncertain hand (entries 376a-394)
• Source: Royal Society, Boyle Papers 27, pp. 5-159
• Languages: English (498 entries) Latin (2 entries)
• Length: 501 entries, 442 of them numbered 201-424 and 501-769 for (for repeated entries, etc., see below).
• Format: Folded foolscap sheets. The following pages in this workdiary are blank and are therefore recorded here but not reproduced as images: BP 27, pp. 46, 48, 56, 58, 61, 70, 72, 80, 82, 84, 102, 112, 134 and 150.
• Note 1: The first item in BP 27 is a vellum cover with the title, 'A. A. THE OUTLANDISH BOOKE'. This may have served as the cover to the booklet containing the large collection of workdiary entries which makes up Workdiary 21 and spans over 100 pages in BP 27. The cover is unpaginated and is followed by a folded foolscap sheet, on whose second and third sides (i.e. pp. 2-3) is written mnemonic verses which key letters and numbers to various of Boyle's works, as listed in his 'The Order of my Several Treatises'. These verses are not reproduced here, since they have already been published in Works, xiv, 335-6 . The workdiary itself begins on BP 27, p. 5, with a page on which is written, very faintly and in pencil, the title of the workdiary -- 'Promiscuous Experiments. Observations & Notes.'-- and the remainder of which is blank. The entries themselves begin on p. 6. Our transcription of the workdiary commences at p. 5
• Note 2: Pp. 55-7 consist of an interfoliated sheet with fair copies (in Bacon's hand) of entries that appear elsewhere in this workdiary. The entries reproduced are 359 (pp. 52-3), 361 (p. 53), 401a, 402b (p. 69), 404 (pp. 69-71). In our transcription we have given them the numbers '359a', '361a', '401a', '402a' and '404a' to differentiate them from the originals from which they were copied.
• Note 3: The entries on p. 62 may not be part of the workdiary. They are not part of the numbered sequence, and the entries are written on the bottom half of the last side of a folded foolscap sheet, the remainder of which is missing. The numbered series recommences on the following page (p. 63). However, although the content of these two entries is very different from that of the surrounding entries, the hand is the same unknown hand which picks up the numbered sequence again on p. 63. This suggests some connection, if only in date of composition, between these entries and the workdiary at this point. For this reason we have included a transcription of these entries, even though we do not know how they were intended to connect with the numbered sequence.
• Note 4: On p. 68, the marginal numbering assigned to the entries gets out of step. Entries 395-8 are numbered 496-9, evidentally accidentally (as is shown by authorial cross-references in entries 398-9 to entries 395 and 397).
• Note 5: At entry 424, the continuous sequence of entries comes to an end. Page 82 is blank, and there follows a sheet (pp. 83-4) with fair copies made by Robin Bacon of entries 337-9 (here denoted 337-9a to differentiate them from the originals from which they were copied) but otherwise blank. On p.85, a new series of entries begins, numbered from 501 onwards and continuing to 767. It is possible that a large group of intervening entries is now lost. However, another possibility is that entries numbered 501-767 represent a parallel series of entries compiled over the same period as entries 201-424: this is suggested by the fact that various of the same amanuenses were employed in both series. There are a number of parallels for Boyle's practice of starting a sequence of numbers at 501 (see Scrupulosity and Science, p. 218).
• Note 6: The last page of the workdiary, p. 159, is a fair copy, in Bacon's hand, of entry 708 (p. 144). We have given it the number 708a to differentiate it from the original from which it was copied.
• Note 7: For dated entries from earlier workdiaries that were recopied here see entries 237, 239-43, 246, 265; for copies made by Bacon, probably in the 1680s, see entries 337-9a, 361a, 401-2a, 404a and 708a.