NATURAL HISTORY OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENT. 405 



had not applied the stimulus proper to those other tissues. It was 

 also pointed out that it was an error to confound nervous influence 

 with sensibility. 



Among the defenders of Haller's views was CHARLES BONNET (1720 

 1793), a native of Geneva, who, originally trained for the profession 

 of the law, became from an early age so devoted to natural history, 

 that, although, by complaisance to his father's wishes, he prosecuted 

 his legal studies until at the age of twenty-three, and took his degree of 

 Doctor of Laws, he then relinquished law, to give himself up to follow 

 the bent of his mind. Bonnet pursued so assiduously investigations 

 into the structure of insects, that his eyesight began to be affected by 

 his incessant use of lenses and microscopes. He was reluctantly 

 obliged to lay aside these instruments, and turn to branches of inquiry 

 which would less tax his vision. He then studied plants, and espe- 

 cially the ascent of the sap. In 1754 he published anonymously, in 

 London, an " Essay on Psychology," and a few years afterwards 

 there appeared a treatise by him on " The Faculties of the Soul." In 

 1769 he published his " Palingenesie Philosophique" which comprised 

 some strange notions concerning animal life. Bonnet devised and 

 performed many curious experiments on plants and animals. 



No naturalist ever possessed in a higher degree the power of accu- 

 rate observation than SPALLANZANI, a native of the Duchy of Modena 

 (1729 1799), who at a very early age was Professor of Logic at the 

 University of Reggio, and afterwards held a professorship at Modena. 

 In 1765 he conclusively proved that animalcules were really animals, the 

 nature of these minute organisms having up to that time been a matter 

 of dispute. In 1785 Spallanzani became Professor of Natural History 

 at Padua, and his lectures there attracted great numbers of students. 



Comparative anatomy had in the celebrated JOHN HUNTER ( 1728 

 1 793) one of its most ardent cultivators. John Hunter was born in La- 

 narkshire, and his father having died when he was only ten years of age, 

 he was allowed to grow up with little or no education whatever. He 

 was apprenticed to a cabinet-maker, with whom he remained for some 

 time, and, but for the circumstance of his master failing, the genius 

 which displayed itself in discovering the mysteries of animal structure 

 might have been employed in fabricating chairs and tables. When his 

 master failed, John Hunter was in the twentieth year of his age, and, 

 left without any other resource, he wrote to an elder brother, William 

 Hunter, who had established himself in London as a physician and lec- 

 turer on anatomy, offering his services as an assistant in the dissecting- 

 room. Hunter intimated that, should this arrangement be impractic- 

 able, he would enlist in the army. Fortunately for science, Dr. Wil- 

 liam Hunter invited his brother to proceed to London, and enter upon 

 the employment he had proposed. John made so rapid a progress in 

 anatomy, that before he had been a year in London he was considered 

 qualified to conduct a class of his own on that subject. His extra- 



