44 LEEUWENHOEK AND HIS “‘ LITTLE ANIMALS ”’ 
modestly submitting his experiences and conceits about 
them to the censure and correction of the learned. 
The foregoing extracts show clearly how Leeuwenhoek’s 
relations with the Royal Society originated: and they dis- 
prove, I think, a statement which has been made elsewhere ' 
that he owed his introduction to Sir Constantijn Huygens. 
From the time when his words quoted above were written 
until the day of his death, fifty years later, Leeuwenhoek 
continued to send letters to the Royal Society. They cover 
an immense field, and contain observations on matters z0o- 
logical, botanical, chemical, physical, physiological, medical, 
and miscellaneous (unclassifiable). They are mostly—but not 
entirely—concerned with observations and discoveries made 
with the microscope. But this is not the place to speak of 
their contents in detail: and I shall only add here that many 
of them—but not all—were published, more or less curtailed, 
in English (or occasionally in Latin) in the Philosophical 
Transactions from 1673 to 1723; and that many of them— 
but not all—were issued fully in Dutch and Latin,’ as separate 
publications, in his lifetime. He himself spoke and wrote and 
understood Dutch only,’ and versions of his views in any other 
tongue suffer from the inevitable defects of translation and 
interpretation. Consequently, one must be able to read old- 
fashioned Dutch to read Leeuwenhoek: and for my own part 
* In the @uvr. Compl. de Chr. Huygens, Vol. VII, p. 316 (footnote)— 
published in 1897—it is averred (I know not by whom) that MS. letters at 
Amsterdam, which passed between L. and Constantijn Huygens (pater), and 
between the latter and Robert Hooke and Oldenburg, show that L.’s first 
relations with the Royal Society were established through the intermediation 
of Const. Huygens: but the documentary and other evidence at my disposal 
seems to show incontrovertibly that the statements made above are correct. 
* Tt is not now known who translated L.’s letters into Latin for the 
editions of his works in that language. It is obvious—from the Latin 
styles, and the period of time covered—that the translations were made by 
more than one hand; but all my attempts to solve this problem have 
hitherto been fruitless. At one moment I thought I had discovered the 
name of one of his translators: for in an English MS. version (unpublished) 
of one of his later letters there is a reference to the translator as © Mynheer 
Aalder”’. But on consulting the original, I found that this was merely a 
misreading of the words “de Heer vertaalder’’ [= the translator] in the 
Dutch manuscript ! 
* See p. 305 sq., infra. 
