16 Proceedings of the Royal Physiccd Society. 



opinions regarding flame, which action on his part, when we 

 remember that these ideas must have been adopted without 

 any proof of their accuracy, seems to us certainly a very extra- 

 ordinary one, especially in the case of a man gifted with such 

 mental powers as he possessed. Like other learned men of 

 his day, Boyle was well aware that certain metals, when they 

 are heated in contact with the air, produce compounds, or 

 calces as they were then called, which invariably weigh more 

 than the original metal from which they are formed. He 

 made many experiments with the view of determining the 

 cause of this increase of weight, but his mind was so much 

 influenced by the opinions he held regarding the ponderable 

 nature of flame, that he unfortunately, as many other philoso- 

 phers have done, attempted to bend the facts to suit his 

 theory, and came to the conclusion, as the result of his inves- 

 tigation, that fire or flame was of a material nature, and was 

 capable of conferring weight. This certainly was a most un- 

 fortunate conclusion, and was the means, quite possibly, of pre- 

 venting Boyle from anticipating some of the brilliant achieve- 

 ments of men M^ho lived nearly a hundred years after his 

 death. Boyle, so far as we can ascertain, was the first to 

 promulgate correct ideas regarding elements and compounds. 

 He said boldly that it was not possible to state — as it had 

 hitherto been supposed it was — the exact number of elements, 

 but that such substances as could not be resolved into simpler 

 forms, and which had been obtained from a compound body, 

 and from which the compound could be again prepared, were to 

 be so regarded. This certainly comes very near to our modern 

 definition. Boyle has been called the first scientific chemist, 

 and he certainly merits the honourable appellation, for 

 although not purely, or even perhaps principally, a chemist, 

 his scientific work, and the clear statements he made regard- 

 ing the value of true scientific investigation, well entitle 

 him to the distinction. 



In the year 1665 was published Eobert Hooke's "Micro- 

 graphia," which contained an account of his remarkable 

 theory of combustion. In this, which was perhaps the first 

 chemical theory worthy of the name, he declared that the 

 air is the universal dissolvent of all sulphurous, or, as we 



