Horace Walpole called Hales "a poor, good, primitive creature" and Pope
{123b} (who was his neighbour) said, "I shall be very glad to see Dr.
Hales, and always love to see him, he is so worthy and good a man."
Peter Collinson writes of "his constant serenity and cheerfulness of
mind"; it is also recorded that "he could look even upon wicked men, and
those who did him unkind offices, without any emotion of particular
indignation; not from want of discernment or sensibility, but he used to
consider them only like those experiments which, upon trial, he found
could never be applied to any useful purpose, and which he therefore
calmly and dispassionately laid aside."

Hales' work may be divided into three heads:

I Physiological, animal and vegetable;
II Chemical;
III Inventions and miscellaneous essays.

Under No. I I shall deal only with his work on plants. The last heading
(No. III) I shall only refer to slightly, but the variety and ingenuity
of his miscellaneous publications is perhaps worth mention here as an
indication of the quality of his mind. It seems to me to have had
something in common with the versatile ingenuity of Erasmus Darwin and of
his grandson Francis Galton. The miscellaneous work also exhibits Hales
as a philanthropist, who cared passionately for bettering the health and
comfort of his fellow creatures by improving their conditions of life.

His chief book from the physiological and chemical point of view is his
_Vegetable Staticks_. It will be convenient to begin with the
physiological part of this book, and refer to the chemistry later.
_Vegetable Staticks_ is a small 8vo of 376 pages, dated on the title-page
1727. The "_Imprimatur_ Isaac Newton Pr. Reg. Soc." is dated February
16, 1720, and this date is of some slight interest, for Newton died on
March 20, and _Vegetable Staticks_ must have been one of the last books
he signed.

The dedication is to George Prince of Wales, afterwards George III. The
author cannot quite avoid the style of his day, for instance: "And as
_Solomon_ the greatest and wisest of men, disdeigned {124} not to inquire
into the nature of Plants, _from the __Cedar of Lebanon_, _to the Hyssop
that springeth out of the wall_: So it will not, I presume, be an
unacceptable entertainment to your Royal Highness," etc.

But the real interest of the dedication is its clear statement of his
views on the nutrition of plants. He asserts that plants o