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Transactions of the Society. 



Rome as physician to Pope Urban VIII ; and the astronomer 

 Francisco Fontana of Naples. 



The earliest microscopical work of the "Lincei" is, unfortu- 

 nately, for the most part inaccessible. It is either lost or it lies, 

 perhaps, still at Rome, in the form of manuscript or of unissued 

 work. Joannes Faber has happily left us a sketch of one of Cesi's 

 botanical researches that establishes the latter as the discoverer of 

 the spores of ferns. Faber, in a work published in 1628, after 

 having explained that he himself had invented the word Microscope, 

 tells us how " our prince Cesi commissioned an artist, specially 





Fig. 43. — Federigo Cesi, Duke of Aquasparta, Founder and President 

 of the Academy of the Lynx, and the Father of Microscopy. 

 From a medal figured by Baldassare Odescalchi in his " Memorie 

 Istorico Critiche dell'Accademia dei Lincei," Rome, 1806. 



chosen for the work, to make draughts for him of numerous plants 

 hitherto regarded by botanists as seedless, but clearly revealed bv 

 this instrument, the Microscope, to be teeming with seeds. Such 

 is the wonderful and minutely fine dust adherent to the back of 

 Polypodium leaves, and appearing as big as peppercorns, but till 

 then reckoned as Nature's mere ornament. These very objects 

 indeed, the Prince, even before using the Microscope, had already 

 designated as seeds, and on that account had set down the plants 

 in the class of ' Tergifceta?.' And when in due course his books 

 and studies of plants shall see the light, we shall possess number- 

 less other novel observations of the Prince." 



