36 
MEMOIR OF SWAMMERDAM. 
merdam’s time. His investigations placed future 
enquirers on a vantage ground which they could not 
otherwise have attained, and, had it not been for the 
discoveries of Swammerdam, we might have wanted 
many of those made by Reaumur, Huber, and others. 
So early as the year 1667 he had prepared and 
partly printed a treatise on the Ephemerus or Day-fly, 
as he calls it, but it was not published till 1675. It 
first appeared in Dutch under the title of Epkemeri 
vita. He states that his principal object in laying it 
before the public was to give us wretched mortals a 
lively image of the shortness of human life, and there- 
by induce us, by frequent admonitions, to aspire to a 
better state of being. It accordingly abounds with 
pious reflections and meditations to such a degree that 
the subject by w r hich they are suggested is, in some 
instances, almost lost sight of. In most of the 
translations which have appeared these portions are 
omitted, as well as the numerous Dutch sentences 
in prose and verse which he has liberally intro- 
duced. He traces with great care and assiduity 
the whole changes of the insect from the egg to 
the perfect state, in which it lives only four or five 
hours. The internal anatomy is also elaborately 
described and figured, constituting by far the most 
valuable portion of the w ork. The following remarks 
occur towards the close : — “ All of these insects die 
in the very short space of time just mentioned, nor 
do any of them, — which is a matter very worthy of 
observation, — die a natural death on land ; all of 
them invariably go to the water again, after they have 
