MALPIGHI 147 



lie worked until lie accepted an invitation to return to 

 Bologna in 1666. Ever since the old days when he had 

 studied under Massari, he had laboured at anatomy and 

 physiology, and his discoveries had now made him 

 famous throughout Europe. In 1667 he received an 

 invitation from Henry Oldenburg, secretary to the Royal 

 Society in London, to enter into a regular correspondence 

 with that young but enterprising body. He gladly con- 

 sented, and was next year made a fellow. Oldenburg 

 suggested that he might make observations on the silk- 

 worm and its economy. To this request Malpighi 

 replied in 1669 by sending his dissertation De Bomhyce, 

 and in the same year the Council of the Eoyal Society 

 resolved : — " That the History of the Silke Worme, by 

 Signor Malpighi, dedicated to the Eoyal Society, be 

 printed forthwith by the printers of the same." This 

 was the first of a long series of scientific communications 

 which were at last collected (collected, but not edited, as 

 Haller truly says), and published by the Royal Society 

 under the title of the Worhs of Malpighi. 



After thirty years of incessant labour Malpighi's career 

 as a scientific explorer came to an end. A letter from 

 Dr. Tancred Robinson to John Ray, dated Geneva, 

 April 18th, 1684, relates the destruction of all Malpighi's 

 unpublished works: — "I had several conferences with 

 S[ignor] Malpighi at Bononia. . . . He honoured me with 

 two visits at my inn, where once he took occasion to be 

 a little angry with Dr. Lister (whose history he had by 

 him), for his opinion of the origin of stones and shells 

 resembling animal bodies.^ Just as I left Bononia, I had 

 a lamentable spectacle of Malpighi's house all in flames, 

 occasioned by the negligence of his old wife. All his 

 pictures, furniture, books, and manuscripts were burnt. 



^ 8wpra, p. 134. 



