1885-86.] Edinburgh Naturalists'' Field Club. 323 



Leeuwenhoek published his observations also in the ' Philosophi- 

 cal Transactions ' a few years after Hooke. He devoted a separate 

 microscope to every object he examined, so that he w^as the happy 

 possessor of two or three hundred instruments. 



The figures who next stand forth conspicuously are Dr Nehemiah 

 Grew, — like Hooke, a Fellow of the Royal Society, — and Marcelli 

 Malpighi, Professor at Bonn, Advancing and improving on the 

 work of their predecessors, they made an enormous addition to our 

 store of permanent scientific truth. Grew, who published in 1682, 

 devoted special attention to the minute anatomy and physiology of 

 plants. I am glad to be able, through the kindness of Professor 

 Dickson, to exhibit the original publication ; for one is greatly 

 struck not only with the accurate and advanced views he pro- 

 pounds, but with the crisp beauty and correctness of his micro- 

 scopic drawings, specially those of stems and roots. The secret 

 of his success is discoverable in the closing words of an early 

 chapter : " What we obtain of Nature we must not do it by com- 

 manding but by courting of her." 



Malpighi's work, issued in 1687, can only doubtfully be called 

 parvus liber, but it certainly is magnum opus, for taking up 

 botanical, medical, and anatomical studies, it discusses these in a 

 most original and accurate manner. Well may we term him 

 " the Father of animal physiology." Enthusiastic workers such 

 as these succeeding each other, and not only inheriting but add- 

 ing to the wealth left by their predecessors, soon called forth, 

 both in this country and abroad, others who devoted their time to 

 improving the microscope, or enlarging our field of knowledge by 

 aid of it. To the latter class belongs one who probably more than 

 any other excited a strong popular interest in minute living things. 

 M. Trembley of Geneva gave to the world, about 1740, the result 

 of his studies on the common fresh- water Hydra; and if the ac- 

 count of the discoveries and experiments on Ants of his illustrious 

 fellow-townsman, Huber, published about fifty years after, were 

 looked on as the ravings of one insane, even more incredible were 

 those of Trembley regarded. That a true animal could be turned 

 outside in and yet arrange its digestive functions to suit the altered 

 conditions ; that it could be cut either lengthways from head to 

 foot or transversely, and each half develop as a new Hydra ; nay, 

 that it might be cut into small pieces, and yet each grow into an 

 adult, — seemed so opposed to all the canons of animal life, that we 

 scarcely wonder at the incredulity with which the announcement 

 was received. It whetted, however, most powerfully the desire 

 for further discovery, and resulted in our countryman Ellis showing 

 that all the Corallines, so-called, were only colonies of such animals. 

 Previous to and about this time, also, great improvements were 

 effected in the construction of the microscope, resulting in new 



