2 LEEUWENHOEK AND HIS “LITTLE ANIMALS”’ 
my teachers had never told me of him (possibly, I now think, 
because they were wnable to utter his name). I found that he 
was honourably mentioned as a pioneer in many different fields 
of scientific research—his discovery of the Protozoa in infusions 
being only one of his many noteworthy achievements. An odd 
circumstance, which (I remember) struck me forcibly at the time, 
was that this old Hollander—for some reason unexplained— 
apparently made a practice of publishing his observations in 
English in our Philosophical Transactions, and was himself 
actually a Fellow of our own Royal Society of London. This 
then seemed to me very queer and inexplicable: yet had it not 
so happened, the present book would never have been written. 
After this my first meeting with Leeuwenhoek, 2 chanced 
that my studies led me away from the protozoa in infusions to 
those living inside frogs. I spent two or three painful years in 
their pursuit ; and in reading up the writings on the subject, I 
found again, to my astonishment, that the earliest observations 
on these organisms too had been made by the same person— 
Leeuwenhoek once more. This revived my interest in hin, and 
caused me to look into his publications anew. But I made little 
progress in my inquiries, because his original records were at that 
time inaccessible; and the second-hand sources of information 
then at my disposal were mostly worthless and contradictory— 
different authors supplying different references and statements, 
most of which turned out to be so incorrect that they led me 
nowhere. When I tried to find out something about the man 
himself, I met with no better success. Most writers agreed m 
calling him “well-known” or even “ celebrated”, and many 
called him “microscopist”’ or “naturalist” (all excellent epithets, 
as I now know). But some people said that he was “ a maker 
of lenses” and even “ the inventor of the microscope” (which 
even then I knew to be wrong), while others said he was a 
“physician”: and had I then looked further, I should have 
found that still others called him “ surgeon” and even“ Doctor” 
and “ Professor.” Yet all writers seemed to be wn agreement on 
one point, expressed or implied: and that was that they knew 
next to nothing about Leeuwenhoek himself, despite his alleged 
celebrity. No two writers gave the same account of him—even 
when copying one another. 
My own next researches (forgive me, dear Reader, for ob- 
truding myself in this fashion : it is unfortunately necessary for 
the present narrative) were largely concerned with the Bacterta— 
