iv] of Glands and Tismes. 93 



the order to print which had been given at a meeting of the 

 Council of the Society in the previous May. The two inquirers 

 struck upon the same ore, at the same time ; and to both credit 

 is due. But everyone who has read the two works by the two 

 men must acknowledge that while that of the Englishman is 

 a sound piece of honest, arduous labour, that of the Italian, no 

 less sound, though perhaps less abounding in valuable detail, 

 shines, more than does the other, with the light of genius, and 

 is richer than the other in philosophic insight. 



Malpighi may also be regarded as, almost in the same 

 degree, the founder of that great and important branch of bio- 

 logical science which we call embryology. Long ago Aristotle 

 had seen and studied the chick forming in the egg. More 

 recently as we have said Fabricius had examined and de- 

 scribed at some length the same mysterious events. Harvey 

 in his later years had given his mind to the problem of 

 the generation of animals. But none of these had gone very 

 far. The first adequate description of the long series of changes 

 by which, as they melt the one into the other, like dissolving 

 views, the little white opaque spot in the egg is transformed 

 into the feathered, living active bird, was given by Malpighi. 

 And where he left it, so for the most part the matter remained 

 until even the present century. For this reason we may speak 

 of him as the founder of embryology. 



He was also a zoologist, at least a comparative anatomist. 

 Surrounded as he was in Italy, and even more so in Sicily 

 by cultivators of the silkworm, his correspondent Oldenburg, 

 the secretary of the Royal Society^ had in his letter invited 

 him "to make the Society acquainted with any observations 

 "made in Italy which he might think worthy of recounting, 

 "and in particular observations on the silkworm and its 

 " economy." Malpighi accordingly devoted himself to an ex- 

 haustive study of the silkworm in its various phases, examining 

 not only its outward form but also the internal arrangement 

 and the minute structure of all its viscera, leaving his name 

 as Malpighian tubules on certain of them, and tracing out 

 the whole history of the creature from the egg to the perfect 

 insect. The results at which he arrived he embodied in a 



