32 PERIOD II. 



The dissection of the sting, the proboscis, and the com- 

 pound eye of the bee was a task after Swammerdam's 

 own heart, but so intricate that all his patience and 

 skill could not save him from occasional slips. He 

 bequeathed to his successors many noble examples of 

 the way in which life-histories ought to be investigated. 



Malpighi of Bologna may be called the first of the 

 histologists, for as early as the second half of the 

 seventeenth century he unravelled the tissues of many 

 animals and plants. His work on plant-tissues was so 

 closely accompanied by the similar researches of an 

 Englishman, Nehemiah Grew, that it is not easy to 

 assign the priority to either. Malpighi was the first to 

 demonstrate the capillaries which connect the arteries 

 with the veins, the first to investigate the glands of the 

 human body and the sensory papillae of the skin. At 

 the request of our Royal Society he drew up an account 

 of the structure and life-history of the silkworm, which 

 is memorable as the earliest anatomical study of any 

 insect. Malpighi also applied his microscope to the 

 chick-embryo, and figured its chief stages. His ex- 

 position of the formation of the heart and vessels of 

 the chick is a marvellous example of the quick appre- 

 ciation of novel structures. 



If we suppose the Micrographia of Hooke to be 

 greatly enlarged, so as to become, instead of the 

 passing occupation of a man busied with a hundred 

 other interests, the main pursuit of a long and laborious 

 life, we shall get a rough notion of the microscopic 

 revelations of Leeuwenhoek. His researches were 

 desultory, though not quite so desultory as Hooke's ; 

 he must have often spent months upon an investigation 

 which Hooke would have dismissed in as many weeks. 

 Both travelled over the whole realm of nature, and 



