372 LEEUWENHOEK AND HIS ‘“‘ LITTLE ANIMALS” 
living protozoa and bacteria, and diatoms '—confirming and 
amplifying many of Leeuwenhoek’s findings and accompanied 
by a commentary, light-hearted and conversational, which 
shows nevertheless remarkable insight and ability. The 
pictures were far ahead of anything previously published, and 
are sufficient alone to establish their draughtsman as Hldest 
Son of the Father of Protozoology. 
Only one other protozoologist of Leeuwenhoek’s period 
deserves notice here—Louis Joblot (1645-1723), a French- 
man. His observations were first published in 1718,’ and 
attracted little notice at the time: but his book is, in fact, 
the first special treatise on the Protozoa, and it contains 
descriptions and figures of many forms not previously 
described. A recent writer* has tried to show that Joblot 
was not merely a follower of Leeuwenhoek, but actually his 
equal—an independent co-discoverer of the Protozoa. But 
such a suggestion is manifestly groundless. There is no 
evidence that Joblot studied the Protozoa as early as the 
time when their discovery was announced by Leeuwenhoek ; 
and the appearance of his book in the next century—only five 
years before they both died—definitively assigns his publication 
to a later generation. In Joblot’s writings there is no direct 
reference to Leeuwenhoek’s discoveries, but much internal 
evidence of imitation.’ 
I have already had occasion to note’ that Leeuwenhoek 
himself made no application of his discovery of “‘ microbes’”’ 
to medical doctrines of contagion. He discovered protozoa 
and bacteria not only in waters and infusions but also in the 
1 Tabellaria—the first account and figures of this organism. Most of 
the other figures are equally easily recognizable. 
2 On Joblot see especially Fleck (1876), Cazeneuve (1893), Boyer (1894), 
Konarski (1895), Brocard (1905), and Dobell (1923). I may note here that 
the work of Sturm (1676), cited by Ehrenberg and others as containing 
contemporary observations on “‘infusoria’’, really deals only with insects 
and nematodes—not with protozoa. It should not be quoted in this 
connexion. 
3 This work is now very rare, and is better known from the much later 
and comparatively common edition of 1754. 
4 Konarski (1895). 
° Cf. Dobell (1923). 
* See p. 230 supra. 
