340 Tret a sv id ions of the Society. 



which rej >resents objects a thousand times greater than their true 

 size. 



" Experiment II. — If you cut up a snake into small parts and 

 macerate it with rain-water, and then expose it for several days to 

 the sun, and again bury it under the earth for a whole day and 

 night, and lastly examine the parts, separated and softened by 

 putridity, by means of a Microscope, you will find that the whole 

 mass swarms with innumerable little multiplying serpents, so that 

 even the sharpest eyes cannot count them. 



" Experiment III. — Many authors claim that unwashed sage is 

 injurious . . . but I have discovered the cause of this. For when, 

 by means of the Microscope, I minutely examined the nature of 

 this plant, I found the back of the leaves entirely covered by raised 

 work, as with the figure of a spider's web, and within the web 

 appeared infinitesimal animalcules, which moving constantly came 

 out of little buds or eggs. . . . 



" Experiment IV. — If you examine a particle of rotten wood 

 under the Microscope, you will see an immense progeny of tiny 

 worms, some with horns, some with wings, others with many feet. 

 They have little black dots of eyes. . . . What must their little 

 livers and stomachs, their tendons and nerves be like ? " 



With Kircher we leave the first or pioneer period of micro- 

 scopical discovery and enter on the classical epoch. About this 

 time fused glass threads began to be used as magnifiers, while the 

 manufacture of small lenses of short focal length was greatly 

 improved by Eustachio Divini and others.* A new era may be 

 said to commence with the publication in 1G61 of a tract by 

 a young Italian Professor, Marcello Malpighi (1628-1694). In 

 that epoch-marking work is described for the first time the capil- 

 lary circulation of the blood, the object chosen for investigation 

 being the surface of the frog's luug.f The entrance of Malpighi 

 introduces a new period in the history of our subject, for guidance 

 in which we may leave our readers to other hands.J 



* See Carlo Antonio Manzini's " L'occbiale all'occhio, Dioptrica pratica,'" 

 Bologna, 16G0. 



t Marcello Malpighi, "Depulmonibusobservationes anatomies','' Fol., Bologna 

 1661. The original tract is excessively rare, but has been frequently reprinted in 

 the various collected editions of Malpigbi's works. 



J Notably, Professor L. C. Miall's admirable volume on " The Early Natu- 

 ralists, their Lives and Work (1530-1789)," London, 1912. 



