116 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION B. 
were to be investigated for their own sake, wholly apart 
from any gain—a scientific age—ushered in for this depart- 
ment by Boyle (1626-1691) and his distinguished contem- 
porary Mayow. 
The Hon. Robert Boyle writes—‘ The schools teach the 
air to be a warm and moist element, and consequently a 
simple and homogeneous body. Many modern philosophers 
have, indeed, justly given up this elementary purity in the 
air, yet few seem to think it a body so greatly componmaes 
as it really appears to be.”’ 
This may be taken as representing the views of the day 
when Boyle entered upon the scene. ‘Our atmosphere, in 
my opinion,’ he continues, “consists not wholly of purer 
aether, or subtile matter which is diffused through the uni- 
verse, but in great number of numberless exhalations of the 
terraqueous globe; and the various-materials that go to 
compose it, with perhaps some substantial emanations from 
the celestial bodies, make up together, not a. bare indeter- 
mined feculancy, but a confused aggregate of different 
effuvia. One principal sort of these effluvia in the atmo- 
sphere I take to be saline, which float variously among the 
rest in that vast ocean; for they seem not to be equally 
mixed therein, but are to be found of different kinds, in 
different quantities and places, in different seasons.” He 
farther writes—‘‘I conjecture that the atmospherical air 
consists of three different kinds of corpuscles; the first, those 
numberless particles which, in the form of vapours or dry ex- 
halations, ascend from the earth, water, minerals, vegetables, 
animals, &c.; in a word, whatever substances are elevated 
by the celestial or subterraneal heat, and thence diffused 
into the atmosphere. The second may be yet more subtile, 
and consist of those exceedingly minute atoms, the magneti- 
eal effluvia of the earth, with other innumerable particles 
gent out from the bodies of the celestial luminaries, and 
causing by their impulse the idea of light in us. The third 
sort is its characteristic and essential property—Ii mean per- 
manently elastic parts.” 
Read by the light of our modern knowledge and views, 
this is surely a remarkable conjecture, but no more so than 
his other acute observations and his projected experiments. 
Mayow (1645-1679)—‘“‘ The atmosphere consists of par- 
ticles of two kinds of gases, at least ; one of these, termed 
‘nitro-aerial particles,’ is necessary for the support of life 
and for the combustion of inflammable bodies; while the 
ether, left after this constituent has been removed, is in- 
PP rern A 
