136 ARTHUR E. SHIPLEY 



sion of the herbs into Monocotyledons and 

 Dicotyledons . . . He made things much 

 easier for Linnaeus, as did Linnaeus in his 

 turn for naturalists who now smile at his mis- 

 takes. Both were capable of proposing hap- 

 hazard classifications, a fact which need not 

 surprise us, when we reflect how much reason 

 we have to suspect that the best arrangements 

 of birds, teleostean fishes, insects and flower- 

 ing plants known to our own generation need 

 to be largely recast." 



Great as were the seventeenth century phi- 

 losophers in the biological and medical sciences, 

 they were paralleled if not surpassed by 

 workers on the physical and mathematical 

 side. Robert Boyle — who has been described 

 as the Father of Chemistry and Brother of the 

 Earl of Cork — was, even as a boy of eighteen, 

 one of the leaders in the comparatively new 

 pursuit of experimental science. His first love 

 was chemistry, "Vulcan has so transported and 

 bewitched me as to make me fancy my labor- 

 atory a kind of Elysium," thus he wrote in 

 1649. A few years later (1652-3), in Ireland, 

 where he was called to look after the family 



