Experiment II.—“If you cut up a snake into small parts and macerate with rain water, and then expose it for several days to the sun and again bury it under the earth for a whole day and night and lastly examine the parts, separated and softened by putridity, by means of a smicroscope you will find the whole mass swarm with innumerable little multiplying serpents so that even the sharpest eyes cannot count them.”

Experiment III.—“Many authors claim that unwashed sage is injurious, but I have discovered the cause of this. For when, by means of the sun, I minutely examined the nature of the plant, I found the back of the leaves completely covered by raised work as with the figure of a spider’s web, and within the water appeared infinitesimal animalcules, which moving constantly came out of little buds or eggs.”

Experiment IV.—“If you examine a particle of rotten wood under the sun, you will see an immense progeny of tiny worms, some with horns, some with wings, others with many feet. They have little black dots of eyes. What must their little livers and stomachs be like?”

In the light of modern discovery much of the writing of these early microscopists seems absurd. Kircher’s experiments, for example, prove nothing, and he is often hopelessly vague and sometimes incorrect in his statements. We must not be too critical, however, for some of this early work was excellent, the microscopes in use would not be tolerated at the present day, and without these pioneers microscopy would not have reached the stage it has. Rather than laugh at their efforts, we should marvel that they did so well.

CHAPTER II
SOME EARLY MICROSCOPISTS

Of the early British microscopists, Robert Hooke must not pass unnoticed. He was appointed Curator of the Royal Society two years after its formation, and the terms of his appointment were somewhat one-sided. He was required to “furnish the Society every day they meet with three or four experiments”; for this no pay was to be his till the Society accumulated sufficient funds to reward him.

Although compound microscopes had been invented in Hooke’s day, it is noteworthy that he remained faithful to the single lens, in fact it was not till very many years later that the simple lens was supplanted, in general use by the more complicated, if more perfect instrument.

In his book on Microscopy, entitled Micrographia, Hooke gives a quaint account of the making of a microscope. “Could we make a microscope,” he writes, “to have only one refraction, it would cæteris paribus, far excel any other that had a greater number. And hence it is, that if you take a very clear piece of a broken Venice glass, and in a Lamp draw it out into very small hairs or threads, then holding the ends of these threads in the flame, till they melt and run into a small round Globul, or drop, which will hang at the end of the thread; and if further you stick several of these upon the end of a stick with a little sealing wax, so that the threads stand upwards, and then on a whetstone first grind off a good part of them, and afterward on a smooth Metal plate, with a little Tripoly, rub them till they come to be very smooth; if one of these be fixt with a little soft wax against a small needle hole, prick’d through a thin Plate of Brass, Lead, Pewter, or any other Metal, and an Object, plac’d very near, be look’d at through it, it will both magnifie and make some Objects more distinct than any of the great Microscopes.”