Workdiary 36 (Accounts of conversations with travellers and
virtuosi on natural phenomena, 1685-91)
Content: Accounts of interviews with
travellers and virtuosi on natural (and some supernatural) phenomena, 1685-91;
informants include Sir John Chardin, Sir Paul Rycaut, Robert Knox, Sir William
Stapleton, Sir Thomas Rolt, and other governors and merchants in the East and
West Indies
General Information
- Creation: 1685-91
- Hands: Hugh Greg (entries 1-2, 2b, 4-22, 25-78, 80-84) unidentified hand (entries 2a, 79) hand C (entry 3) uncertain hand (entries 23-24) uncertain hand (perhaps a formal hand of Hugh Greg) (entries 85-118)
- Source: Royal Society, Boyle Papers 21, pp. 255-312
- Languages: English (121 entries) French (1 entry) Latin (1 entry)
- Length: 122 entries, of which 100 are
numbered 1-100
- Format: folded foolscap sheets
- Note 1: Dated c. 1662-5 (including some entries
apparently re-copied from earlier notes
- Note 2: The composition of this workdiary is
confused in its first few pages. P. 256 appears to be a page from another
workdiary or collection of notes, as its contents are not in the numbered
sequence of the remainder, and its content is dissimilar to the other entries.
It was apparently used as scrap paper for this workdiary as entry 2 from p. 255
finishes in the cramped margin of this page, and no other entries for this
workdiary are found on the page. In addition, entry 4, an early version of the
Historical Account of a Strangely Self-moving
Liquor (a fair copy of which is written out in BP 25, pp. 321-4, and
which was published in
Philosophical Transactions,
15 (1685),
1188-92 ), which begins
on p. 257, cuts off abruptly at the bottom of p. 258, the last page of a folded
foolscap sheet (of which pp. 255-6 are the first two sides). The entry picks up
again and concludes, written upside down in relation to all the other pages in
the workdiary, on p. 276. Furthermore, the following entry in the numbered
series, on p. 259 (a new folded foolscap sheet), is 6, while there is no 5
following the conclusion of entry 4 on p. 276. The other side of p. 276 (i.e.
p. 275) contains the continuation and conclusion from p. 274 of entry 35, while
the next page, p. 277, starts with entry 36. It is not known how the conclusion
of entry 4 became so out of place or what happened to entry 5, but it is
apparent that the initial pages of this workdiary, and certainly its first
folded foolscap sheet, were assembled in a disjointed manner.