288 STUDIES IN INSECT LIFE, ETC. 

 to record the importance of the " vital air " 

 we now call it oxygen to plants, and although 

 he had gifts of observation, his work lay largely 

 in the paths of alchemy and astrology, and he 

 seems to have had recourse to a lively imagination 

 in estimating the results of his experiments. 

 He trafficked in the transmutation of metals, and 

 his name was long associated with a certain 

 " powder of sympathy " which, like the " absent 

 treatment " of the twentieth century practitioners 

 of Christian science, " acted at a distance/' 

 Evelyn looked on him as a quack, " a teller of 

 strange things/' and Lady Fanshawe refers to his 

 infirmity of lying ; he was certainly a great talker. 

 Still, other men of his epoch spoke well of him, 

 and his conversation was doubtless stimulating 

 if profuse. 



In mathematics, John Wallis was, to some 

 extent, a forerunner of Newton. At Felsted 

 School and at Emmanuel College, he received 

 the curiously wide education of his age. He 

 was a skilled linguist ; although he had taken 

 holy orders, he was the first of Francis Glisson's 

 pupils to proclaim in public Harvey's discovery 

 on the circulation of the blood, but his bent 

 was towards mathematics, and he possessed an 



