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acquainted were fast being discovered, invented, or improved. 

 Men were giving their energies to special subjects, and 

 science generally was making a great advance. 



In the seventeenth century Galileo wrote to Kepler that 

 he had seen the moons of Jupiter and the phases of Venus 

 through his telescope. Harvey, our great countryman, dis- 

 covered the circulation of the blood. Swammerdam studied 

 the metamorphosis of insects. Malpighi and Leuwenhoek, 

 with the aid of the microscope, carried out researches on 

 the anatomy of plants and animals. John Ray, with the 

 assistance of his pupil and benefactor, Francis Willoughby, 

 published numerous works which constituted a very distinct 

 advance, and laid the foundation stones of modern natural 

 history. Newton discovered the law of gravitation. The 

 Royal Society was incorporated, and Greenwich observatory 

 was built. In fact, in this period, which may be considered 

 as the Renaissance period of natural history, the men who, 

 either by taste or accident, took up the study of natural 

 history, were not willing to accept blindly everything that 

 their elders taught them, or that the Church enjoined them 

 to believe. They felt the need of proving or attempting to 

 prove the theories of the ancients, and in so doing came on 

 new facts which stimulated them to fresh researches. The 

 days when the idea prevailed that it was impious to seek for 

 knowledge of the highest heavens or of the most secret wells 

 of life were beginning to pass away. How gradual and 

 lingering the passing is, some ideas held in the present time 

 may show. We may say that the foundations of the modern 

 methods of studying natural history were laid in this period, 

 in and around the seventeenth century. As all naturalists 

 who had written up to that time were more or less influenced 

 by the Greek philosophers, it will not be pressing the case 

 too far to state that these pioneers of modern science, who 

 lived in the seventeenth century, were all directly or indirectly 

 greatly indebted to the writings of Aristotle. Thus we see 

 that the reign of Aristotle lasted nearly two thousand years, 

 and, though no longer reigning in solitary grandeur, he must 

 ever be accounted, not only the father of naturalists, but 

 also one of the great princes in the domain of natural 

 history. 



