LEEUWENHOEK’S DRAUGHTSMEN 343 
engravers dealt faithfully with their prototypes: and I 
fancy that the average modern editor, if drawings such as 
Leeuwenhoek’s originals were submitted to him in illustration 
of a present-day paper, would return them to the author with 
a note saying that they were “not suitable for reproduction”. 
I have, indeed, been compelled to act on this principle myself : 
the original drawings, en sanguine on discoloured and yellowish 
paper, illustrating the letters on Anthophysa and the protozoa 
on duckweed, are still extant; but I cannot reproduce them 
here—for technical reasons—and have had to use the 
engravings originally made from these drawings instead. 
A few “rough and simple sketches ’’—mostly on the mar- 
gins of the MSS.—were evidently the work of Leeuwenhoek 
himself’: because careful examination shows that they 
were drawn with the same pen and the same ink as the 
accompanying autograph handwriting. They bear out his 
own statement that he was no artist. 
In Leeuwenhoek’s letters I have been unable to find any 
mention of the name of the draughtsman—“‘de teijckenaer’’, or 
“the limner’”’ as Hoole always calls him—who made his 
illustrations for him. (He is frequently mentioned, but never 
by name.) It is unlikely, indeed, that all the drawings were 
executed by the same artist, for they were made at intervals 
during some 50 years; and there is no reason to believe that 
Leeuwenhoek’s longevity was characteristic of all citizens of 
Delft at that period. It seems to me certain, therefore, that 
more than one hand must have participated in the illustration 
of his discoveries. 
It is generally supposed that Leeuwenhoek’s draughtsmen 
are unknown. Nevertheless, there is at least one important 
record bearing on this subject which seems to have been 
overlooked. In Boitet’s book on Delft (1729; pp. 790-91) we 
are told of a certain Thomas van der Wilt (born 1659”), who 
was ‘‘a fine painter and a good poet,” and who was a pupil of 
Johannes Verkolje. It is said by Boitet that he settled in 
Delft, and there found plenty of work as a portrait-painter and 
otherwise; and “ By his wife Johanna Biddaff he had a son, 
1 The cube illustrating the argument in the letter to Const. Huygens 
(p. 189 supra) is one as these: and the pepper-tube (Plate XXII) is 
another. 
* He died at Delft in 1733 (fide Bryan, 1905). 
