388 FOUNDATIONS OF BIOLOGY 



he could bring within the scope of his simple lenses. With an 

 unexplored field before him, all of his observations were dis- 

 coveries. Bacteria, Protozoa, Hydra, and many other 

 organisms were first revealed by his lenses. But Leeuwen- 

 hoek's discovery of the sperm of animals created the most 

 astonishment. His imagination, however, outstripped his 

 observations for he thought he saw evidence of the organism 

 preformed within the sperm and so came to regard it as the 

 true germ which had only to be hatched by the female. 



The patience of Leeuwenhoek would have been strained 

 to the breaking point by the studies on insect anatomy made 

 by SWAMMERDAM (1637-1680) of Holland. Instigated 

 largely by the desire to refute the current notion that insects 

 and similar lower animals are without complicated internal 

 organs, Swammerdam spent his life in studies on their struc- 

 ture and life histories. Revealing, as he did, by the most deli- 

 cate technique in dissection, the finest details observable 

 with his lenses, Swammerdam not only set a standard for 

 minute anatomy which was unsurpassed for a century, but 

 also dissipated for all time the conception of simplicity of 

 structure in the lower animals. He thus, quite naturally, 

 added one more argument to those of the Italian REDI (1626- 

 1698) and others against spontaneous generation. 



Malpighi of Bologna and Grew of London, contemporaries 

 of Hooke, Leeuwenhoek, and Swammerdam, may be con- 

 sidered as the pioneer histologists. GREW (1641-1712) 

 devoted all his attention to plant structure, while MALPIGHI 

 (1628-1694), in addition to botanical studies which paralleled 

 Grew's, made elaborate investigations on animals. 



The versatility as well as the genius of Malpighi is shown by 

 his studies on the anatomy of plants, the function of leaves, 

 the development of the plant embryo, the embryology of the 

 chick, the anatomy of the silkworm, and the structure of 



