Although this explanation of the composition of the air is most crude, it had the effect of directing attention to the fact that the atmosphere is not "mere nothingness," but a "something" with a definite composition, and this served as a good foundation for future investigations. To be sure, Boyle was neither the first nor the only chemist who had suspected that the air was a mixture of gases, and not a simple one, and that only certain of these gases take part in the process of calcination....