Workdiary 29 (Accounts of experiments and observations, early 1670s)

Content: Accounts of experiments and observations from the early 1670s; experiments involve hydrostatics, magnetism, luminosity, etc.

General Information

• Creation: early 1670s
• Hands: Frederick Slare (entries 212-281, 285-300) uncertain hand (entries 281a-284)
• Source: Royal Society, Boyle Papers 27, pp. 179-96, 211-8, 221-52
• Languages: English (all entries)
• Length: 95 entries, of which 87 are numbered 214 to 300
• Format: Folded foolscap sheets. Most of this workdiary is written on the rectos only, with the versos being blank, though these wre occasionally used (BP 27, pp. 188, 190 and 246-52). The following pages are blank and are therefore recorded here but not reproduced as images: BP 27, pp. 180, 182, 184, 186, 192, 194, 212, 214, 216, 222, 224, 226, 228, 230, 232, 234, 236, 238, 240, 242 and 244.
• Note 1: This workdiary was bound in a jumbled manner in the present BP 27. It commences on p. 179 and proceeds to p. 196. Pp. 197 to 210 consist largely of a number of tables and indices which may or may not be related to the entries in this and other workdiaries. The workdiary picks up again, in mid-entry, on p. 211 and continues to p. 218. Pp. 219-20 are an extraneous leaf from a separate workdiary interpolated into this one. Written in hand F, this leaf probably dates from the late 1660s and concerns the 'preservation of bodies'. The entries on this leaf are provided as Workdiary 25. The present workdiary continues from p. 221 to 252.
• Note 2: Entries 215 to 220 were originally written as 315 to 320, but the first digit of their marginal numbers was restrospectively altered.
• Note 3: Entries 281 to 300 may not have originally formed part of the same group of entries as the preceding entries. The entries start, in a completely new hand, three-quarters of the way down the page on p. 245. The numeration does continue from the preceding series (except that 281 is repeated in the first one), but it is clear that entries 281-94 were originally numbered 1-14 in ink, with the preceding digits '28' and '29' added later in pencil (entries 295-300 have their numbers written in the margin in pencil). However, there is some continuity with the preceding section in that Frederick Slare, who wrote all the preceding entries, takes over as scribe from entry 285 until the end of the workdiary.
• Note 4: The first entry transcribed here, 212, is obviously incomplete and suggests that there were preceding leaves, now lost, where the first eleven entries, and the beginning of the twelfth, were recorded . We are working on the assumption that these surviving entries form the remainder of a complete 'century', numbered during Boyle's time from 201 to 300. This view is further supported by a key to entries found in the leaves bound between the two major portions of this workdiary. BP 27, p. 200 contains a list of numbers from 201 to 281. Beside these numbers are written various numbers and occasional verbal descriptions, presumably meant to be keys to the content of the numbers. An examination of some of the descriptions beside the numbers indicates that this index, with its numbers in the 200s, refers to this specific workdiary. We have thus adopted this numbering scheme in our own editorial numbering of this workdiary's entries.