Fellow of the Royal Society. He published a work on the West Indies,
but his claim to undying memory is the fact that it was the bequest
of his most valuable and extensive collections to the nation which
was the beginning and foundation of the British Museum, perhaps the
most celebrated institution of its kind in the world. Sloane's
collection, it should be added, contained an immense number of
valuable books and manuscripts, as well as of objects more usually
associated with the idea of a museum. He died in 1753.

The Hon. Robert Boyle was born at Lismore, in the county Waterford,
in 1627, being the fourteenth child of the first Earl of Cork. On his
tombstone he is described as "The Father of Chemistry and the Uncle
of the Earl of Cork", and, indeed, in his _Skyptical Chimist_ (1661),
he assailed, and for the time overthrew, the idea of the alchemists
that there was a _materia prima_, asserting as he did that theory of
chemical "elements" which held good until the discoveries in
connection with radium led to a modification in chemical teaching.
This may be said of Boyle, that his writings profoundly modified
scientific opinion, and his name will always stand in the forefront
amongst those of chemists. He made important improvements in the
air-pump, was one of the earliest Fellows of the Royal Society, and
founded the "Boyle Lectures." He died in 1691.

Sir Thomas Molyneux was born in Dublin, in 1661, of a family which
had settled in Ireland about 1560-70. He practised as a physician in
his native city, was the first person to describe the Irish Elk and
to demonstrate the fact that the Giant's Causeway was a natural and
not, as had been previously supposed, an artificial production. He
was the author of many other scientific observations. He died in
1733.