I 



SOME EARLY MICROSCOPISTS 



various living creatures are generated from non- 

 living matter. Fleas, for example, he was certain, 

 came from dirt, and it remained for Leeuwenhoek \ 

 to prove that they arise from eggs and grubs, in ( 

 the manner now so well understood. 



He carefully studied the structure of a garden 

 spider, and for the first time explained its wonderful 

 feet, its jaws and poison gland, its spinnerets and 

 silk. He studied Hydra first of all men, and said 

 that, under the microscope, its tentacles appeared 

 to be several fathoms long. Although sadly at sea 

 over the correct position of his snails in the animal 

 world, he was clever enough to include Volvoos 

 amongst the plants and fortunate enough to see the 

 young forms escape from the parent colony. 



Concerning this microscopist's early studies in 

 bacteriology we may quote from Professor Miall's 

 The Early Naturalists, a book by the way of the 

 greatest interest to those who would learn some- 

 thing of the struggles of the men who laid the 

 foundations of our present-day biological knowledge. 



Professor Miall says : "In 1683 Leeuwenhoek 

 wrote a letter to the Royal Society which contains 

 the first mention of bacteria. He had been writing 

 and speculating upon saliva, and had searched the 

 saliva of the human mouth for animalcules without 

 finding any. It then occurred to him to ask whether 

 the teeth might lodge animalcules discharged from 

 the salivary ducts. He tells us that, though his own 

 teeth were scrupulously clean and particularly sound 

 for his age (about fifty), the lens revealed a white 



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