SWAMMERDAM 179 



Stensen, but acceptance of the Catholic faith was laid 

 down as a necessary preliminary, and Swammerdam 

 declared that he would not sell his soul at a price. In 

 1675, the very year in which the History of the 

 Ephemera appeared, Stensen sent to Malpighi some 

 of Swammerdam's figures of the silkworm, together with 

 a short letter : — " Swammerdam begs you to receive 

 kindly these figures,^ since he is about to give up the 

 study of natural objects. He had undertaken a work of 

 the same kind as yours (the treatise DeBomhyce, 1669), 

 but has destroyed it, keeping only the figures. He is 

 seeking after God, but not as yet in the church of God." 

 Swammerdam's father died in 1677, and bequeathed 

 property to his son.^ But the will was disputed, and 

 amidst anxieties of every kind, money-cares, religious 

 controversy, continual illness and disappointed hopes, 

 the naturalist's life came to a sad close in 1680 ; he was 

 only forty-three. 



During his life-time Swammerdam had published, 

 besides academical theses, a General History of Insects, 

 a description of the life-history of Ephemera, and an 

 account of the chameleon. Both the General History 

 and the Ephemera were afterwards incorporated with 

 the Bihlia Natures. 



THE BIBLIA NATURJE 



Of the Bihlia Natures, as of other works whose excel- 

 lence lies in the mass of finished detail which they ofier, 

 no account in the least adequate can be given. We have 



' The figures sent to Malpighi may have been those which now appear in the 

 Biblia Naturce, PI. XXVIII, Figs, i-iii. 



^ Copies are still extant of the sale-catalogue of the elder Swammerdam's 

 museum (143 pp. in Latin and Dutch, 8vo., 1679), and of the collection of 

 insect-preparations, anatomical preparations, injections, &c., of the son. A 

 note at the end informs us that both collections were offered for sale at the 

 same time. 



