THE REVIVAL OF SCIENCE 121 



Another aristocratic inventor, Edward 

 Somerset, second marquis of Worcester, has 

 received more credit than he deserved. He 

 was interested in mechanics and employed a 

 skilled mechanician, one Kaltoff, in his labora- 

 tory, but his claims to have invented a steam- 

 engine do not bear critical investigation, and 

 his well-known Century of Inventions does 

 not rise to the level of The Boy's Own Booh 

 of the last century. Many of his suggestions, 

 though ingenious, are based on fallacies, and 

 comparatively few of them were practical. 



A curiously versatile amateur in science was 

 Sir Kenelm Digby. Like most prominent 

 men of his time, he intervened in theological 

 questions, besides playing an active part in 

 public affairs. He was an original member of 

 the Royal Society, but although he is reported 

 to have been the first to record the importance 

 of the "vital air" — we now call it oxygen — to 

 plants, and although he had gifts of observa- 

 tion, his work lay largely in the paths of 

 alchemy and astrology, and he seems to have 

 had recourse to a lively imagination in esti- 

 mating the results of his experiments. He 



