4^6 THE HISTORY OF BIOLOGY 



forgotten. He is best known, however, as the founder of France's zoological 

 marine stations at RoscofF and Banyuls. On these institutions he spent large 

 sums out of his own purse and laid down the lines and methods on which 

 they were to work. Being a man of essentially conservative views, it was 

 only after a long time and after much hesitation that he accepted the theory 

 of the origin of species. He viewed with scepticism many of the movements 

 of his time; he had written up over the door of his laboratory the words: 

 "Science has neither religion nor politics" — a sentiment that certainly de- 

 serves greater attention than has been given to it in modern times. 



3 . Microbiology 



That there exists a world of organisms which owing to its small size eludes 

 observation with the naked eye has been known since the invention of the 

 microscope, but our knowledge of these creatures may be said nevertheless 

 to begin from the age with which we are now dealing, when an improved 

 microscopical technique first made possible a more thorough exploration of 

 this extensive field. Leeuwenhoek, the foremost microscopist of the seven- 

 teenth century, discovered, as previously mentioned, a number of minute 

 animals, partly in water taken from rivers and lakes, partly in putrefying 

 matter of various kinds. He studied them as carefully as he could, was con- 

 vinced of their character of living creatures, and declared that they multiplied 

 only by reproduction. During the succeeding century these investigations 

 went on with fresh observations in isolated cases, but without yielding any 

 really novel results. It was found that these minute animals exist especially 

 in water which has been allowed to stand over parts of plants or other simi- 

 lar growths, and from the fact of their existence in such "infusions" they 

 were called Infusoria, or infusion-animals. BufFon, in accordance with his 

 general theory of life, believed them to be products of the life-units existing 

 everywhere, while Spallanzani firmly rejected the idea of their spontaneous 

 generation. The scientist who first made a special study of the Infusoria, 

 however, was the Dane O. F. Miiller, who is therefore worthy of further 

 mention in this connexion. 



Otto Frederik Muller was born in 1730 in Copenhagen, where his 

 father was a musician. He grew up in poverty, was given an opportunity 

 of studying theology at the university, and then went in for jurisprudence, 

 but the whole time he had to earn his living as a tutor in aristocratic fami- 

 lies, on whom his amiable social qualities made a particularly favourable 

 impression. During his visits to their estates he began to interest himself 

 in nature, particularly in insects, which he collected and described in a series 

 '^^mall treatises. As private tutor to a young count he had an opportunity 



