THE NEW SCIENCE 21 



teniatic botany was begun in the last thirty years of the seventeenth 

 century".** The great names in the study of botany were: — Mori- 

 son, Grew, Ray, Willughby, Leeuwenhoek, Tournefort, and Mal- 

 pighi. Morison "helped in the discrimination of genera and got 

 an idea of lineal descent"; Ray and Willughby developed the 

 theory of sex among plants and called attention to striking analo- 

 gies between plant life and human life, their chief work, however, 

 being a descriptive classification of 18,600 plants (Histona plan- 

 tar urn Generalis) ; Grew and Malpighi used the compound micro- 

 scope to study the cellular structure of plants; Tournefort, also 

 a systematic botanist, was the author of Institutiones Rei Her- 

 barias, "without a doubt the best book to appear before the time 

 of Linnaeus";*^ a long series of his papers are given in the Philo- 

 sophical Transactions.^^ 



With the passing of these men botanical science must await 

 Linnaeus in the second half of the eighteenth century. But the 

 accomplishment during this period was noteworthy. The micro- 

 scope had been of great aid in discovering the cellular structure of 

 plants, in tracing the flow of sap, and in classifying the species. 

 From 1725 to 1740 the Royal Society received yearly for its re- 

 pository fifty plants from the Chelsea Gardens.®^ 



"The true use of Chemistry", Paracelsus (1493-1541) had said, 

 "is not to make gold, but to prepare medicine". This was still 

 largely the belief, the popular conception of a chemist being either 

 the "sooty Chymist", vainly seeking to transmute the baser metals 

 into gold, or the apothecary. There was, however, a new element 

 contributed by Sir Robert Boyle, i. e., that all chemical changes 

 were due to fire. Add to this the Stahl Phlogiston theory (during 

 combustion phlogiston, the inflammable element, makes its escape, 

 and is the cause of light and heat), and the great contributions to 

 Chemistry in this period end. But there is a new attitude in chemi- 

 cal investigation, as elsewhere. The new science tended to destroy 

 alchemy^^ as the new astronomy tended to destroy astrology. Ben 



^ Ibid. p. 66. 



^ Thomson, T., History of the Royal Society, p. 33. 



^Phil Trans. Aug.-Sept., 1674; Aug.-Sept., 1675; June, 1683; Feb., 1685; July- 

 Aug., 1693; Sept.-Oct., 1694, etc. 



«' Of. Phil. Trans. 1725-40. 



^Ency. Brit., Chemistry, 11th Ed. Of. Ashmole's Theatrum Chymicum; Hathaway's 

 The Alchemist, Introduction. 



