The Work of Swammerdam. 47 
full of errors. A little later, Columella, though usually 
careful and accurate in his observations, still gave voice to 
the prevailing errors, though ‘much that he wrote was val- 
uable and more was curious. As Mr, Langstroth once 
said to me, Columella wrote as one who had, handled the 
things of ‘which he wrote; and not like Virgil, as one 
who was dealing with second hand wares. Pliny . the 
elder, who wrote in the second century, A. D., helped to 
continue the erroneous opinions which previous authors | 
had given, and not content with this, he added opinions of 
his own, which were not only without foundation but were 
often the perfection of absurdity. 
After this, nearly two thousand years passed with no - 
progress in natural history; even for two centuries after 
the revival of learning, we find nothing worthy of note. 
Swammerdam, a Dutch entomologist, in the middle of the 
seventeenth century, wrote a general history: of insects ; 
also, “« The Natural History of Bees.” He and his Eng- 
lish contemporary, Ray, showed their ability as naturalists 
by founding their systems on the insect transformations. 
. They also revived the study and practice of anatomy, 
which had slept since its first introduction by Aristotle, as 
the great stepping-stone in zoological progress. I never 
open the grand work of Swammerdam, with its admirable 
illustrations, without feelings of the most profound respect 
and admiration. Though a very pioneer in anatomy, and 
one of the founders of Natural Science, and possessed of 
lenses of very inferior quality, yet he wrote with an accu- 
racy and illustrated even minute tissues with a correctness 
and elegance that might well put to the blush many a mod- 
ern writer. 
Ray also gave special attention to Hymenoptera, and 
was much aided by Willoughby and Lister. At this time 
Harvey, so justly noted for his discovery of the circulation 
of the blood, announced his celebrated dictum, “ Omnia ex 
ovo ”—all life from eggs—which was completely estab- 
lished by the noted Italians, Redi and Malpighi. Toward 
the middle of the eightcenth century, the great Linnaeus 
— the brilliant Star of the North ”—published his “ Sys- 
tema Nature,” and threw a flood of light on the whole 
