‘“‘“DAST LETTER’’ TO THE ROYAL SOCIETY 87 
final collective edition of his works. Concluding this letter 
he wrote’: 
Methinks these will be the last observations I shall 
be able to send to you honourable Gentlemen; because 
my hands grow weak, and suffer from a little shakiness, 
which is due to my far advanced years, a good 85 having 
passed by me. And so I send you with this my deep 
thankfulness, because in the year 1679* you were so kind 
as to elect me, quite beyond my competence, a Fellow 
of the most worthy College of the Royal Society ; and to 
send me a Diploma, together with two letters from the 
Secretaries of the Society, which likewise made known 
to me my election, by all the votes of the Fellows, then 
gathered together at a very full meeting.” 
I thank you also for the Philosophical Transactions, 
which Your Excellencies have been so good as to send 
me from time to time. 
For all these honours and gifts aforesaid, I herewith 
convey to you my gratitude once more. 
But the end was not yet. After writing the foregoing 
lines, Leeuwenhoek lived for nearly six years more ; and 
during this period he sent the Society no less than 18 more 
letters (including 2 posthumous epistles), containing a variety 
of new microscopical discoveries. In a postscript to one of 
these letters he says *: 
1 From Letter dated 20 November 1717. To the Royal Society. There 
is no MS. of this letter in the Roy. Soc. collection. It was not published 
in the Phil. Trans., but was printed in both Dutch and Latin : Send-brieven 
(1718), No. XLVI, p. 451; Opera Omnia [Epist. Physiol.] (1719), Vol. IV, 
No. XLVI, p. 437. I translate from these published versions.—It is 
remarkable that Miall (1912, p. 201) and several other students of L. have 
assumed that this was really his last letter. 
? 1680, according to present-day reckoning (N.S.). Cf. p. 48 supra. 
* Cf. p. 48, note 6, supra. 
‘From Letter dated 24 January 1721. To the Royal Society. MS. 
Roy. Soc. (The postscript is in L.’s own hand, but the letter itself is in 
different handwriting.) Original in Dutch—from which I translate. An 
English version of this letter was published in Phil. Trans. (1721), 
Vol. XXXI, No. 367, p.134. It is not in the Dutch or Latin collected 
works. 
