"Dr. Hales... resumed the investigations commenced with so much success by Boyle, Hooke, and Mayow; and endeavoured to ascertain the chemical relations of air to other substances, and to ascertain by statical experiments the cases in nature, in which it is absorbed or emitted. ...[B]ut, misled by the notion of one elementary principle constituting elastic matter... he formed few inferences connected with the refined philosophy of the subject..."