BRIEF HISTORY OF THE SCIENCE OF ZOOLOGY 465 



small things just liecause they were small. He first saw the red 

 corpuscles, the cross striatioiis of muscle fibres, the tubules in 

 teeth, the dry cells of the outer skin. He first studied under 

 the microscope numerous small animals, such as fleas, flies, 

 various small beetles, and the compound eyes of insects. He 

 discovered the parthenogenesis of the plant lice and the bud- 

 ding of Hydra. Also he dis- 

 covered the rotifers and various 

 Protozoa. It is rare that an 

 opportunity arises to study, by 

 the aid of a new invention, a 

 wholly new world of organ- 

 isms without leaving home, 

 and Leeuwenhoek took full 

 advantage of his unique 

 opportunity. 



The end of the seventeenth 

 and the beginning of the eigh- 

 teenth century was a period of 

 immense scientific activity in 

 many directions. Numerous 

 learned societies or academies 

 were started in England, Germanj^, France, Italy, Austria, and 

 Russia, and their publications served as repositories for the 

 new discoveries. In consequence of the great collections of 

 animals and plants that were being made, museums were 

 founded, frequently by the academies, to care for them and 

 to encourage further collecting. Zoological gardens were es- 

 tablished to keep alive the new and strange animals that ex- 

 plorers brought back from newly discovered lands. All of 

 these things must have stimulated the love of nature innate 

 2h 



Fig. 41S. — ^ Leeuwenhoek. From 

 Loey, "Biology and its Makers," 

 New York, Henry Holt and 

 Company. 



