PERRAULT AND HIS COLLEAGUES 237 



Humboldt many years later found that the Spectacle 

 of Nature was highly esteemed in Spanish America. 

 Professed students make light of such books, but those 

 who appreciate the importance of beginnings will not 

 despise these early attempts to diffuse more widely an 

 elementary knowledge of the natural sciences. 



SOME ENGLISH CONTEMPOEAEIES OF EEDI AND 

 PEREAULT 



Thomas Willis' treatise De Anima Brutorum (8vo. 

 Lond. 1672) interests the naturalist because it contains 

 an anatomical description of certain invertebrate animals. 

 Willis was too busy to undertake this part of the book, 

 and handed it over to Edmund King and John Master, 

 who produced much better accounts of the oyster, cray- 

 fish and earthworm than had been seen before ; the 

 anatomy of an insect (silkworm) is added, but this is 

 taken from Malpighi. The illustrative figures, based 

 on careful dissection, surpassed all previous work of 

 the kind, and were often quoted or copied by foreign 

 naturalists. 



In the oyster the four gills, the labial palps, the 

 adductor muscle and the typhlosole are shown, but the 

 nervous system is neither figured nor mentioned. It 

 is pointed out that in the crayfish the flesh is covered 

 by the "bones," not as in vertebrates, the bones by the 

 flesh.^ Attention is called to the inverted position 

 (in comparison with a vertebrate) of the chief organs of 

 the crayfish, to the inclusion of the nerve-cord within 

 the sternal ossicles, and to the gastric teeth. In the 



iThis is remarked also by Perrault (Eiiaais de Physique, Vol. Ill, pp. 80-1 

 and by Swammerdam (Biblia Natures, p. 444). 



