It is more to the purpose to read, under the same date : —
"To the Rhenish wine-house,* and there Mr. Jonas Moore, the mathe- matician, to us, and there he did by discourse make us fully believe that England and France were once the same continent, by very good arguments, and spoke very many things not so much to prove the Scripture false, as that the time therein is not well computed nor understood." — Vol. i., p. 235.
On the 13th January, 1661–2, Pepys would seem to have made acquaintance with what is known as "Rupert's Drops,"! the mode of fracture of which is nearly identical with the newly- discovered toughened glass of the present day : — " Mr. Peter did show us the experiment (which 1 had heard talke of) of the chymicall glasses which break all to dust by breaking off a little small end; which is a great mystery to me."
An astounding fact in Natural History is disclosed in an entry under date February 4th, 1661–2. It is to be feared that Mr. Templer (supposed to have been a clergyman, too) was given to travellers' tales : —
"At noon to my Lord Crewe's, where one Mr. Templer (an ingenious man and a person of honour he seems to be) dined ; and discoursing of the nature of serpents, he told us some in the waste places in Lancashire do grow to a great bigness, and do feed upon larkes, which they take thus : — They observe when the lark is soared to the highest, and do crawl till they come to be just underneath them; and there they place themselves with their mouth uppermost, and there, as is conceived, they do eject poyson upon the bird ; for the bird do suddenly come down again in its course of a circle, and falls directly into the mouth of the serpent; which is very strange. He is a great traveller ; and speaking of the tarautula, he says that all the harvest long (about which times they are most busy) there are fidlers go up and down the fields every where in expectation of being hired by those that are stung." — Vol. i., p. 244.
This was in Crooked Lane.
+ Mr. Jonas Moore (known as one of the most eminent mathematicians of his day, knighted by Charles II., and who died in 1679; was clearly much in advance of his time.
+ "Rupert's drops" was the name given to a philosophical toy brought to England by Prince Rupert. These are small tadpole-shaped pieces of glass which have been formed by allowing fused glass to drop into water. A blow may be given with impunity to the head of the glass tadpole ; but the mere breaking off of the tail causes the whole to fly to dust with a sharp explosion. ('Encyclopaedia Britannica.' article " Annealing.")
