VERMEER. WINE-GAUGING om 
One other municipal function which Leeuwenhoek is now 
known to have discharged is that of wine-gauger (wijnroeijer)." 
He was elected to this post on 15 August 1679, and apparently 
occupied it (partly by proxy) for the rest of his life. The 
terms of this office are too long to print here in extenso. It 
must suffice to note that the wine-gauger had to assay all 
wines and spirits entering the town, and to calibrate the 
vessels in which they were contained; while he was himself 
debarred from engaging in any trade connected with liquor.” 
This appointment again throws some light upon our Leeuwen- 
hoek: for his personal knowledge of wines—including their 
effects and antidotes—will be evident to all attentive readers 
of his letters. 
From the date of his appointment as Chamberlain in 1660 
nothing was heard of Leeuwenhoek outside of Delft for thirteen 
years, though we may be sure that he was not idle during this 
interval. But in 1673 we hear of him again in an altogether 
unexpected connexion. Our Dutch Draper-Chamberlain is 
now suddenly discovered to us as an amateur of science— 
offering a paper, containing some modest original observations, 
for publication in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal 
Society of London. 
How this came about is soon told. The Royal Society, 
then but recently founded,* was eager to get into communica- 
tion with allmen—no matter what their rank or nationality— 
who were working for “ the promotion of natural knowledge” : * 
and in this endeavour it was successful, in no small measure, 
through the efforts of its energetic secretary Mr Oldenburg 
1 First recorded by Morre (1919) and Bouricius (1925). The latter has 
kindly supplied me (from the archives of Delft) with full particulars—partly 
given above—relating to the functions of a wine-gauger.—There is, I find, 
an early Dutch work on gauging by Cornelis van Leeuwen (1663), with 
which L. was probably familiar and which describes the technique fully. 
? Since these lines were written Schierbeek (1929) has published the 
regulations regarding the office of wine-gauger in greater detail. 
° Readers desirous of knowing more about this historic event may be 
referred specially to the works of Sprat (1667) and Weld (1848); and also 
to the more recent Record of the Roy. Soc. (1912) and the posthumous 
publication of Miss Ornstein (1928). 
*“They [the Royal Society] exact no extraordinary praeparations of 
Learning: to have found Senses and Truth, is with them a sufficient 
Qualification” (Sprat, 2 ed. (1702), p. 435). 
