LEEUWENHOEK’S DWELLING 341 
the accidental circumstance that no Englishman or Fellow of 
the Royal Society was present at the farce enacted in 1875 at 
‘* Leeuwenhoek’s house, where he discovered the Infusoria in 
1675”. But the whole affair is deplorable, and the less said 
about it the better. 
The comedy of errors associated with ‘ Leeuwenhoek’s 
house ” is unhappily paralleled in the history of his birthplace. 
About ten years ago, Mr Bouricius succeeded in discovering 
the place where Leeuwenhoek was born—a house in the 
Oosteinde of Delft, at that date still erect but used as a 
warehouse by a hide-merchant named Roes. Bouricius (1925) 
published a picture of this building, and with his kind assist- 
ance I had it rephotographed in 1926. (See Plate II.’) But 
in February, 1929, Mr Bouricius unfortunately died: and 
later in the same year, when Dr Schierbeek was about to 
propose to a Dutch scientific gathering’ that a commemora- 
tive tablet should be placed on the house, he found that it 
had just been pulled down—to enlarge the playground of 
another children’s school ! 
It will thus be seen that the house in which Leeuwenhoek 
was born, the other house in which he lived and worked 
and traded and died, and even the house in which he is 
now erroneously supposed to have resided, have all been 
demolished. Delft, Holland, England, London, the Royal 
Society, and everyone else in every land, may therefore all be 
censured for having done nothing to preserve Leeuwenhoek’s 
bodily connexion with the world. 
But it is needless to bewail the hard fact that such 
material relics of Leeuwenhoek’s existence have been thus 
wantonly destroyed. His own works are a monumentum aere 
perennius which no vandal or house-breaker or Fellow of the 
Royal Society can ever annihilate. For my own part, I feel 
no sorrow when I reflect that the site of his own dwelling 
is now occupied by an obscure modern shop: and I almost 
rejoice that the place where he was born, and the ground 
1 This photograph has already been published, unfortunately, by Dr 
Schierbeek (1930), though it was taken at my expense for the present work. 
I note this lest I be accused of borrowing his illustration without 
acknowledgement. 
2 Genootschap voor Geschiedenis der Genees-, Natuur- en Wiskunde. 
