SWAMMERDAM 177 



his remaining years at least attested his complete 

 sincerity.^ 



Swammerdam's General History of Insects was 

 published in 1669, when the author was thirty-two, and 

 still entirely dependent upon his father, who began to 

 grow impatient of the burden. A severe attack of ague 

 had impaired the naturalist's health, and from this time 

 the disease continually returned. He was bent upon 

 completing fresh insect studies, among the rest, a treatise 

 on the Ephemera, and a fuller account of the structure 

 and life-history of the hive-bee than had hitherto ap- 

 peared. But the father would have no more of these 

 unproductive labours, and Swammerdam was forced to 

 promise that he would now give his undivided attention 

 to medical practice. To conciliate his father, he first 

 wrote out with immense labour a complete catalogue of 

 the museum. The ague came back, and Swammerdam 

 had to go into the country to recruit. It was June, and 

 the butterflies were abroad. The temptation proved 

 irresistible, and he relapsed into natural history. How 

 he propitiated his angry father we do not know, but the 

 printing of the history of the Ephemera in 1675 points 

 to further pecuniary assistance. During these troubled 

 years the laborious observations and exact delineations 

 which fill the two large folios of the Bihlia Natures 

 were incessantly accumulating. Boerhaave (who did 

 not, we must note, write from personal knowledge) gives 

 us a vivid picture of the toil bestowed upon them. 

 " Swammerdam's labours were superhuman. Through 

 the day he observed incessantly, and at night described 

 and drew what he had seen. By six o'clock in the 

 morning in summer he began to find enough light to 

 enable him to trace the minutise of na4iural objects. He 



* Foster, History of Physiology ^ Leot. IV. 

 M 



