THE DRY FLY. 119 



known men of his time, but his services to 

 science were great and lasting, not so much for 

 what he did, which of course has been super- 

 seded, but because he practised and taught the 

 experimental method, as opposed to the 

 dogmatism which held the field in his day. He 

 wrote on a wide range of subjects : on the air 

 pump, which he perfected; on the elasticity of 

 gases, on which 'Boyle's Law' is still recog- 

 nised, on the temperature of the blood, on the 

 properties of hydrogen and of white phos- 

 phorus, on seraphic love, on the iridescence 

 of soap bubbles, on the weight of light, and 

 among others, on fishing. Occasional Reflec- 

 tions Upon Several Subjects appeared in 1665. 

 It is a book of moral disquisitions and 

 allegorical analogies, displaying perhaps a 

 wide knowledge and some observation, but 

 chiefly remarkable for its amazing lack of 

 humour. No circumstance is too trivial to 

 point the weightiest moral, or too ridiculous 

 to be dragged into the loftiest metaphor. It 

 afforded too easy a mark to escape satire in an 

 age of satire, and it was parodied not only by 

 the author of Hudibras in Occasional Reflec- 

 tions on Dr. Charlton's feeling a Dog's Pulse 

 at Gresham College, but also by Swift in 

 Meditations on a Broom Stick : a parody which, 

 written to relieve the intolerable boredom of 

 having to read the book daily to Lady 

 Berkeley, he gravely palmed off on his patroness 

 as an original. But perhaps its chief distinc- 



