THE ENVOY 363 
of the Microscope”.’ Many such claims are manifestly 
absurd; yet his own right to be regarded as the Father of 
Protozoology and Bacteriology is, I believe, real and 
indisputable. 
The discovery of the microscope is still in dispute, but I 
need not discuss the subject here. Its invention is intimately 
bound up with that of the telescope, and the rival claims of 
Italy and Holland in this connexion have been ably defended 
in recent times by Govi (1888), and Harting (1850) and de 
Waard (1906) respectively. The question has also been 
critically considered lately by Singer (1921) and Disney (1928). 
For present purposes it will suffice to note that one form of 
the microscope (¢.e., the compound microscope, to which the 
name is properly applied) was probably devised in Holland in 
the first decade of the XVII Century (not earlier), while 
immediately afterwards another form was independently 
discovered in Italy. But Leeuwenhoek probably knew nothing 
of all this, and it is unnecessary to argue here about the 
priority of Zacharias Janssen, Lipperhey, Drebbel, Galileo, or 
any other possible “inventor of the microscope”. Leeuwen- 
hoek did not use a microscope, but only a simple lens; so 
that the invention of the compound instrument (which 
occurred before he was born) has no bearing whatsoever upon 
his own work or discoveries. 
The discovery of simple lenses is, however, also a subject 
of dispute. It is now known, from the profound researches of 
the French scholar Martin (1871), that the ancients knew 
nothing about magnifying-glasses—notwithstanding the con- 
fident assertions of Dutens and many another more recent 
writer. Our Roger Bacon® (circa 1214-1294) had at least a 
glimmering of the properties and possibilities of lenses, but 
the first were probably made, and used as spectacles, about 
1 Byen since these lines were written I have read a paper (Chapman, 
1931) in which it is said that L.’s observations “ have earned for him the 
title of ‘The Father of Microscopy ’.” 
2 This excellent and fully documented work appears to have been over- 
looked by all recent writers on the history of the microscope—including 
Singer and Disney. 
3 Of. Bridges (1914). In this connexion the reader may also consult 
with profit the recent historical analyses by Singer (1921) and Disney e¢ al. 
(1928). The literature dealing with Bacon is too vast to cite here. 
