PROGRESS OF MINUTE ANATOMY gl 
It is said that he was skilled in at least eight languages; and 
at one time he was the cipher secretary and confidential 
translator for the United Provinces of Holland. He was 
educated as a lawyer, but, from interest in the subject, de- 
voted most of his time to engraving cbjects of natural history. 
Among his earliest published drawings were the figures for 
Lesser’s Theology of Insects (1742) and for Trembley’s 
famous treatise on Hydra (174.4). 
His Great Monograph.-—Finally Lyonct decided to branch 
out for himself, and produce a monograph on insect anatomy. 
After some preliminary work on the sheep-tick, he settled 
upon the caterpillar of the goat moth, which lives upon the 
willow-tree. His work, first published in 1750, bore the title 
Traité Anatonique de la Chenille qui ronge le bois de Saule. 
In exploring the anatomy of the form chosen, he displayed 
not only patience, but great skill as a dissector, while his 
superiority as a draughtsman was continually shown in his 
sketches. He engraved his own figures on copper. ‘The draw- 
ings are very remarkable for the amount of detail that they 
show. He dissected this form with the same thoroughness 
with which medical men have dissected the human body. 
The superficial niuscles were carefully drawn and were then 
cut away in order to expose the next underlying layer which, 
in turn, was sketched and then removed. The amount of 
detail involved in this work may be in part realized from the 
circumstance that he distinguished 4,041 separate muscles. 
His sketches show these muscles accurately drawn, and the 
principal ones are lettered. When he came to expose the 
nerves, he followed the minute branches to individual small 
muscles and sketched them, not in a diagrammatic way, but 
as accurate drawings from the natural object. The breath- 
ing-tubes were followed in the same manner, and the other 
organs of the body were all dissected and drawn with remark- 
able thoroughness. Lyonet was not trained in anatomy 
