8o BIOLOGY AXD ITS MAKERS 



His grandfather and his great-grandfather were Delft brewers, 

 and his grandmother a brewer's daughter. The family were 

 doubtless wealthy. His schooling seems to have been brought 

 to a close at the age of sixteen, when he was '' removed to a 

 clothing business in Am.sterdam, where he filled the office of 

 bookkeeper and cashier." After a few years he returned to 

 Delft, and at the age of twenty-two he married, and gave 

 himself up largely to studies in natural history. Six years 

 after his marriage he obtained the appointment mentioned 

 above. He was tv/ice married, but left only one child, a 

 daughter by his first wife. In the old church at Delft is a 

 monument erected bv this daudrter to the mcmorv of her 

 father. 



He led an easy, prosperous, but withal a busy life. The 

 microscope had recently been invented, and for observation 

 with that new instrument Leeuwenhoek showed an avidity 

 am^ounting to a passion. 



"That he was in com.fortable, if not afllucnt, circum- 

 stances is clear from the character of his writings; that he 

 was not troubled by any very anxious and responsible duties 

 is certain from the continuity of his scientific work; that he 

 could secure the services of persons of influence is discernible 

 from the circumstances that, in 1673, De Graaf sent his first 

 paper to the Royal Society of London; that in 1680 the same 

 society admitted him as fellow; that the directors of the East 

 India Company sent him specimicns of natural history, and 

 that, in 1698, Peter the Great paid him a call to inspect his 

 microscopes and their revelations." 



Leeuwenhoek seems to have been fascinated by the mar- 

 vels of the microscopic world, but the extent and quality of 

 his work lifted him above the level of the dilettante. He 

 was not, like Malpighi and Swammerdam, a skilled dissector, 

 but turned his microscope in all directions; to the mineral 

 as well as to the vegetable and animal kingdoms. Just when 



