A chaotic mind …

… John Aubrey and his circle: those magnificent men and their flying machines � The Spectator. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Aubrey noted down everything. Spectacles were beginning to be common in England. The novel concept of gardening for pleasure rather than for strictly practical purposes caught on fast in his lifetime. Hooke was busy designing a pocket watch and a prototype flying machine. Their friend Francis Potter worked on new kinds of clock, compass and crossbow as well as blood transfusion and bee-keeping (‘He showed me bees’ thighs under a microscope’). Like others of his sort to this day, Aubrey sat up till all hours making merry at the World’s End pub ‘on my Knightsbridge rounds by moonlight’.