22 STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



of different degrees of merit, and have never perhaps 

 been united in one person, yet they are both essential 

 to the perfection of our science. Swammerdara 

 sunk into an early grave, before he could give to 

 the world the result of his labours ; and but for the 

 patriotic feeling and the munificent liberality of the 

 great Boerhaave, his manuscripts, drawings, and 

 engravings would probably never have seen the 

 light Were it not customary to date the different 

 stages of this science from the periods when parti- 

 cular systems of arrangement were in vogue, we 

 should consider that a new era was commenced by 

 Swammerdam, rather than by Ray; for the one 

 enriched science with a mass of important facts, 

 entirely and absolutely new ; while the other merely 

 employed these facts to construct a system, and this 

 system chiefly modelled from that already sketched 

 out by Aristotle. The original edition of Swam- 

 merdam's incomparable volume, in Latin and Dutch, 

 was published at Leyden, under the superintendence 

 of Boerhaave, in 1738 ; and it at length obtained 

 so much reputation, that an English translation* 

 appeared twenty years afterwards. We have intro- 

 duced the name of Swammerdam in this part of our 

 history because he was the contemporary of Goedart, 

 Merrett, and Lister ; and was prosecuting his re- 

 searches at the same time, although science received 

 no benefit from his discoveries until many years after. 

 (12.) Resuming, therefore, the thread of our 

 narrative from the rude performance of Merrett, 



* The Book of Nature ; or, the History of Insects. By 

 John Swammerdam. Translated by Thomas Floyd. Revised, 

 &c. by John Hill, M.D. London, 1758, 1 vol. folio. 



