320 LEEUWENHOEK AND HIS ‘“‘ LITTLE ANIMALS” 
a focal length of 3G in., magnified not 160 but 200 diameters 
according to present-day reckoning—and so on throughout. 
After a somewhat lengthy discussion, Baker reaches the 
conclusion that Leeuwenhoek’s best microscopes, with which 
he made his most considerable discoveries, “ must certainly 
have been much greater Magnifiers than any in our Possession”’ 
—a conclusion which was then well founded. 
I need not give Baker’s illustrations of a Leeuwenhoek 
microscope—which have often been copied—nor their accom- 
panying description,’ for more instructive data are now avail- 
able: but I must here quote some other contemporary records 
which throw more light on the present subject. 
It is well known that Leeuwenhoek left many microscopes 
with his daughter when he died. Apart from the 26 bequeathed 
to the Royal Society there were some hundreds of others— 
though their number is generally misstated. Maria did not 
sell any of these instruments, but preserved them all her life. 
After her own death (1745), however, they were put up for 
auction and dispersed. Copies of the sale-catalogue (1747) 
are still extant ; but the late Professor P. Harting, of Utrecht, 
possessed a unique example which is of the greatest interest 
and on which he has left some valuable notes’. I shall 
therefore here translate his words verbatum, as they contain 
information now unobtainable elsewhere. In 1850 he wrote: * 
I have in my possession two copies of the catalogue 
of Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes, drawn up for the auction 
which took place on Monday the 29th of May, 1747. 
One of these copies was probably used by the notary or 
auctioneer at the time of the sale, for it is interleaved 
with white paper on which the names of all the buyers, 
and the prices fetched by the instruments, are carefully 
recorded. The catalogue is got up rather more luxuriously 
than is customary at the present day; for it is printed 
1 Baker (1753), pp. 434-436; Plate XVII, figs. VII and VIII. (Dutch 
edition [1770], pp. 453-456; Pl. XVII, afb. 7 & 8.) 
* Haaxman (1875), p.38, has also described this catalogue, but adds 
nothing material to Harting’s account. 
* Het Mikroskoop, Vol. III, p.41 footnote. I have been unable to 
discover what happened to Harting’s copies of the catalogue after his death. 
