36 MEMOIli OF SWAMMERDAM. 



merdam's time. His investigations placed future 

 enquirers on a vantage ground which they could not 

 otherwise have attained, and, had it not been for the 

 discoveries of Swammerdam, we might have wanted 

 many of those made by Reaumur, Huber, and others. 

 So early as the year 1667 he had prepared and 

 partly printed a treatise on the Ephemerus or Day-fly,, 

 as he calls it, but it was not published till 1675. It 

 first appeared in Dutch under the title of Ephemeri 

 vita. He states that his principal object in laying it 

 before the public was to give us wretched mortals a 

 lively image of the shortness of human life, and there- 

 by induce us, by frequent admonitions, to aspire to a 

 better state of being. It accordingly abounds with 

 pious reflections and meditations to such a degree that 

 the subject by which they are suggested is, in some 

 instances, almost lost sight of. In most of the 

 translations which have appeared these portions are 

 omitted, as well as the numerous Dutch sentences 

 in prose and verse which he has liberally intro- 

 duced. He traces with great care and assiduity 

 the whole changes of the insect from the egg to 

 the perfect state, in which it lives only four or five 

 hours. The internal anatomy is also elaborately 

 described and figured, constituting by far the most 

 valuable portion of the work. The following remarks 

 occur towards the close : " All of these insects die 

 in the very short space of time just mentioned, nor 

 do any of them, which is a matter very worthy of 

 observation, die a natural death on land ; all of 

 them invariably go to the water again, after they have 



