OF WASHINGTON. 91 



Athanase Kircher (1602-1680) was a father of the Society of 

 Jesus, Rome, and was reported to be kt well versed on all matters 

 but very credulous." He was a teacher at Wiirzburg in 1618, 

 and afterwards Professor of Mathematics at the Collegio Romano 

 in Rome, and became quite celebrated for his scientific re 

 searches. He was the author of a work, Mundus Sub- 

 terranous (Amsterdam, 1678, 7 vols.), full of marvelous 

 tales of spontaneous origin, etc., based on "authentic observa 

 tions " (Osborne). He was also evidently an enthusiastic col 

 lector, as the descriptions of his collections in the '-^Museum 

 Kircher i amim " bv Bonannius and Battara indicate.* 



Of the writers of this period Reaumur says they looked only 

 to confirm what the ancients had written, and saw only what the 

 ancients had seen, a^id lacked all originality, and that it was not 

 until after the respect for and trust in the work of the ancients 

 was lost somewhat, and doubts as to their accuracy began to ob 

 tain, that real effort was made to verify and add to knowledge. 



Group III. The Ray Period. 



This brings us to the Ray period (1650-1750), or the third 

 group of writers. The earliest of the better known names be 

 longing to this period of doubters and original workers are Mal- 

 pighi, Swammerdam, Redi, and the distinctive or epoch-making 

 name of the period, Ray. Several of the writers of this period 

 which does not contain many prominent names) connect the 

 preceding period with the one under discussion. 



Some of these, through ignorance, Reaumur says, perhaps 

 were fortunately unable to read the ancients, and hence accom 

 plished useful work. He refers in this connection to Goedart 

 and Madam Merian. 



The first step in advance was to demolish the ridiculous fables 

 of the ancients relative to the origin of many of the smaller ani 

 mals, which were held to spring from the corruption of larger 



*This collection, known as the Museo Kircheriano, was acquired by the 

 Government of Italy in 1870, and the writer spent an hour looking through 

 it in the autumn of 1897 in the Collegio Romano, where it is still kept in 

 tact, except for the Natural History material, which has been elsewhere 

 distributed or lost. 



