But notwithstanding the crude and uncritical nature of the writings of the second half of the eighteenth century, resulting from the lack of that more careful and detailed observation which characterizes our day, there was during this period a widespread interest in physical and natural science, and it led up to that more exact study of nature which signalizes the nineteenth century. "More new truths concerning the external world," says Buckle, "were discovered in France during the latter half of the eighteenth century than during all preceding periods put together."[66] As Perkins[67] says: "Interest in scientific study, as in political investigation, seemed to rise suddenly from almost complete inactivity to extraordinary development. In both departments English thinkers had led the way, but if the impulse to such investigations came from without, the work done in France in every branch of scientific research during the eighteenth century was excelled by no other nation, and England alone could assert any claim to results of equal importance. The researches of Coulomb in electricity, of Buffon in geology, of Lavoisier in chemistry, of Daubenton in comparative anatomy, carried still farther by their illustrious successors towards the close of the century, did much to establish conceptions of the universe and its laws upon a scientific basis." And not only did Rousseau make botany fashionable, but Goldsmith wrote from Paris in 1755: "I have seen as bright a circle of beauty at the chemical lectures of Rouelle as gracing the court of Versailles." Petit lectured on astronomy to crowded houses, and among his listeners were gentlemen and ladies of fashion, as well as professional students.[68] The popularizers of science during this period were Voltaire, Montesquieu, Alembert, Diderot, and other encyclopædists.