222 Britain's Heritage of Science 



in western Europe were effecting in the latter part of the 

 fifteenth and throughout the sixteenth century began to 

 be paralleled in the investigations of the physical laws of 

 Nature only at the end of the sixteenth century and through- 

 out the first three quarters of the seventeenth. 



Writing broadly, we may say that, during the Stewart 

 time, the sciences, as we now class them, were slowly but 

 surely separating themselves out from the general mass of 

 learning, segregating into secondary units; and from a 

 general amalgam of scientific knowledge, mathematics, 

 astronomy, physics, chemistry, geology, mineralogy, zoology, 

 botany, agriculture, even physiology (the offspring of anatomy 

 and chemistry) were beginning to assert claims to individual 

 and distinct existence. It was in the Stewart reigns that, 

 in England at any rate, the specialist began to emerge from 

 those who hitherto had " taken all knowledge to be " their 

 " province." Certain of the sciences, such as anatomy, 

 physiology and, to a great extent, zoology and botany, had 

 their inception in the art of medicine ; but the last two owed 

 much to the huntsman and the agriculturist. 



The great outburst of scientific enquiry which occurred 

 during the seventeenth century was partly the result, and 

 partly the cause, of the invention of numerous new methods 

 and innumerable new instruments, by the use of which 

 advance in natural knowledge was immensely facilitated. 



The barometer, the thermometer and the air pump, and, 

 later, the compound microscope, all came into being at the 

 earlier part of the seventeenth century, and by the middle 

 of the century were in the hands of whoever cared to use 

 them. Pepys, in 1664, acquired : 



" a microscope and a scotoscope. For the first I 

 did give him 5 10s., a great price, but a most curious 

 bauble it is, and he says, as good, nay, the best he knows 

 in England. The other he gives me, and is of value; 

 and a curious curiosity it is to discover objects in a dark 

 room with." 



Two years later, on August 19th, 1666, " comes by 

 agreement Mr. Reeves, bringing me a lantern " it must 

 have been a magic lantern " with pictures in glass, to make 

 strange things appear on a wall, very pretty." 



