He saw, and rummaged through, and clambered over, slices of numerous tree-trunks that someone had gathered in a bid to demonstrate that the thin parts of the rings tended to point towards true north. A Brazilian compass-fish that Boyle had suspended from a thread to see if (as legend had it) it would do the same (when Daniel came in, it was pointing south by southeast). Jars containing: powder of the lungs and livers of vipers (someone thought you could produce young vipers from it), something called Sympathetic Powder that supposedly healed wounds through a voodoo-like process. Samples of a mysterious red fluid taken from the Bloody Pond at Newington. Betel-nut, camphire-wood, nux vomica, rhino-horn. A ball of hair that Sir William Curtius had found in a cow's belly. Some experiments in progress: a number of pebbles contained in glass jars full of water, the necks of the jars just barely large enough to let the pebbles in; later they would see if the pebbles could be removed, and if not, it would prove that they had grown in the water. Very large amounts of splintered lumber of all types, domestic and foreign – the residue of the Royal Society's endless experiments on the breaking-strength of wooden beams. The Earl of Balcarres's heart, which he had thoughtfully donated to them, but not until he had died of natural causes. A box of stones that various people had coughed up out of their lungs, which the R.S. was saving up to send as a present to the King. Hundreds of wasps' and birds' nests, methodically labeled with the names of the proud patrons who had brought them in. A box of baby vertebrae which had been removed from a large abscess in the side of a woman who'd had a failed pregnancy twelve years earlier. Stored in jars in spirits of wine: various human fœtuses, the head of a colt with a double eye in the center of its forehead, an eel from Japan. Tacked to the wall: the skin of a seven-legged, two-bodied, single-headed lamb. Decomposing in glass boxes: the Royal Society's viper collection, all dead of starvation; some had their heads tied to their tails as part of some sort of Uroburos experiment. More hairballs. The heart of an executed person, superficially no different from that of the Earl of Balcarres. A vial containing seeds that had supposedly been voided in the urine of a maid in Holland. A jar of blue pigment made from tincture of galls, a jar of green made from Hungarian vitriol. A sketch of one of the Dwarves who supposedly inhabited the Canary Islands. Hundreds of lodestones of various sizes and shapes. A model of a giant crossbow that Hooke had designed for flinging harpoons at whales. A U-shaped glass tube that Boyle had filled with quicksilver to prove that its undulations were akin to those of a pendulum.