to salute him in their name, and to invite him to honour them with his company. Sir Jo. Hoskins and Sir Christopher Wren accompanied me. . . . He was sorry he could not gratify the curiosity of the Society at present, his things not being yet out of the ship, but would wait on them with them on his return from Paris, whither he was going next day, but with intention to return suddenly and stay longer here, the persecution in France not suffering Protestants—and he was one—to be quiet." Chardine went to the East in search of jewels and had become very rich. They "found him at his lodgings in his Eastern habit, a very handsome person, extremely affable, a modest, well-bred man, not inclin'd to talke wonders. He seem'd about 36 years old." Chardine was the author of the excellent and well-known volume of travels.
Frequently scientific parties visited the homes of English virtuosi who had cabinets of scientific or historical curiosities or inventions of their own to exhibit. Pepys mentions, May 1, 1665, meeting and joining Lord Brouncker, Sir Robert Murray, "the heart and soul of the Royal Society"; Dean Wilkins, and Mr. Hooke, curator of the society, who were going by boat and coach to dine with the inventor, Colonel Blount, and witness "the trial of some experiment about making coaches easy." After admiring their host's "long spring coach" and dining with him, the party went to Deptford, and "into Mr. Evelyn's (Sayes Court), which is a most beautiful place. ... A lovely and noble ground he hath indeed. And among other varieties a hive of bees, so as being hived in glass, you may see the bees making their honey and combs mighty pleasantly. ... It being dark and late I stayed not; but Dean Wilkins and Mr. Hooke and I walked to Redriffe; and noble discourse all day long did please me."
The transparent apiary to which Pepys alludes was a present from Dr. Wilkins, who invented it, to Evelyn. It was regarded as so great a curiosity that Charles II made an excursion to Sayes Court expressly to see it. Evelyn described the hive as built like a castle or palace, adorned with little statues, dials, and vanes, and so contrived that the honey could be removed without injuring the bees. Evelyn was a scientific horticulturist, and his gardens and orchards were the wonder and admiration of his contemporaries, one of whom described his grounds as a "garden exquisite and most boscaresque, and as it were an exempler of his book of forest trees"—the famous Sylva written for the Royal Society at the request of the Admiralty Board. August 4, 1665, Evelyn writes: "I call'd at Durdans, where I found Dr. Wilkins, Sir William Petty, and Mr. Hooke, contriving chariots, war rigging for ships, a wheele for one to run races in, and other
