WRITINGS OX INSECT ANATOMY. 6 



sioned by the negligence of his old wife. All his pictures, 

 furniture, books, and manuscripts were burnt. I saw him in 

 the very heat of the calamity, and methought I never beheld so 

 much Christian patience and philosophy in any man before ; for 

 he comforted his wife, and condoled nothing but the loss of his 

 papers, which are more lamented than the Alexandrian Library, 

 or Bartholine's Bibliothece, at Copenhagen." * 



Swammerdam on the Honey Bee. 



Swammerdam's great posthumous work, the Biblia jSTaturse, 

 contains about a dozen life-histories of Insects worked out in 

 more or less detail. Of these the May-fly (published during 

 the author's life- time, in 1675) is the most famous ; that on the 

 Honey Bee the most elaborate. Swammerdam was ten years 

 younger than Malpighi, and knew Malpighi's treatise on the 

 Silkworm a not inconsiderable advantage. His working-life 

 as a naturalist comes within the ten years between 1663 and 



\j 



1673 ; and this short space of time was darkened by anxiety 

 about money, as well as by the religious fanaticism, which in 

 the end completely extinguished his activity. The vast amount 

 of highly-finished work which he accomplished in these ten 

 years justifies Boerhaave's rather rhetorical account of his 

 industry. Unfortunately, Boerhaave, whom we have to thank 

 not onlv for a useful sketch of Swammerdam's life, but also for 



+r 



the preservation of most of his writings, was only twelve years 

 old when the great naturalist died, and his account cannot be 

 taken as personal testimony. Swammerdam, he tells us, worked 

 with a simple microscope and several powers. His great skill 

 lay in his dexterous use of scissors. Sometimes he employed 

 tools so fine as to require whetting under the microscope. He 

 was famous for inflated and injected preparations. As to his 

 patience, it is enough to say that he would spend whole days in 

 clearing a single caterpillar. Boerhaave gives us a picture of 

 Swammerdam at work which the reader does not soon forget. 

 " His labours were superhuman. Through the day he observed 

 incessantly, and at night he described and drew what he had 

 seen. By six o'clock in the morning in summer he began to 



* Correspondence of John Ray, p. 142. 



