SIR HUMPHREY DA VY. 53 



case in which the stores of an apothecary's shop are recorded 

 to have fed the enthusiasm and materially assisted the labours 

 of the young cultivator of natural science. The Gemian 

 chemist, Scheele, who has just been mentioned, and whose 

 name ranks in his own department with the greatest of his time, 

 was, as well as Davy, apprenticed in early life to an apothecary. 

 While living in his master's house he used secretly to prosecute 

 the study of his favourite science by employing often half the 

 night in reading the works that treated of it, or making 

 experiments with instruments fabricated, as Davy's were, by 

 himself, and out of equally simple materials. Like the young 

 British philosopher, too, Scheele is recorded to have sometimes 

 alarmed the whole household by his detonations ; — an incident 

 which always brought down upon him the severe anger of his 

 master, and heavy menaces intended to deter him from ever 

 again applying himself to such dangerous studies, which, how- 

 ever, he did not long regard. It was at an apothecary's house, 

 as has been noticed in a former page, that Boyle and his Oxford 

 friends first held their scientific meetings, induced, as v.'e are 

 expressly told, by the opportunity they would thus have of 

 obtaining drugs wherewith to make their experiments. Newton 

 lodged with an apothecary, while at school, in the town ol 

 Grantham ; and as, even at that early age, he is known to have 

 been ardently devoted to scientific contrivances and experi- 

 ments, and to have been in the habit of converting all sorts of 

 articles into auxiliaries in his favourite pursuits, it is not probable 

 that the various strange preparations which filled the shelves 

 and boxes of his landlord's shop would escape his curious 

 examination. Although Newton's glory chiefly depends upon 

 his discoveries in abstract and mechanical science, some of his 

 speculations, and especially some of his writings on the subjects 



