CH. XVII. FIRST USE OF THE MICROSCOPE, 137 



CHAPTER XVII. 



SCIENCE OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY (CONTINUED). 



Malpighi first uses the Microscope to examine Living Structures — He 

 describes the Air-cells of the Lungs — Watches the Circulation of the 

 Blood —Observes the Malpighian layer in the human Skin — De- 

 scribes the structure of the Silkworm — Leeuvk^enhoeck discovers 

 Animalcules — Grew and Malpighi discover the Cellular Structure of 

 Plants — The Stomates in Leaves — They study the Germination of 

 Seeds — Ray and Willughby classify and describe Animals and Plants 

 — The Friendship of these two Men. 



Use of the Microscope by Malpighi, 1661. — We have now 

 fairly left behind us the first fifty years of the seventeenth 

 century ; indeed, the experiments of Boyle and Mayow were 

 all made after 1650. But I wish especially here to remind 

 you that we have just begun the second half of the century, 

 because it will help you to remember an important study 

 which began very quietly about this time, but which has in 

 the end opened out to us an entirely new world of discovery. 

 In the year 1609, at the beginning of the century, Galileo 

 brought distant worlds into view by the use of the telescope) 

 and in like m;mner in the year 16&1, or about the middle of 

 the century, Malpighi, by the use of the microscope^ revealed 

 the wonders of infinitely minute structures, or parts of living 

 bodies ; enabling men to see fibres, vessels, and germs, which 

 were as much hidden before by their minuteness as the 

 moons of Jupiter had been by their distance. It is not quite 

 certain who invented the microscope (fiiKpdg, little ; crkOTriw, I 

 look) ; but as the first which were made were only telescopes 



