[1078] Biogr. Univ.
Redi. 18. The bloodless animals, and even those of cold blood, with the exception of fishes, had occupied but little attention of any good zoologists till after the middle of the century. They were now studied with considerable success. Redi, established as a physician at Florence, had yet time for that various literature which has immortalized his name. He opposed, and in a great degree disproved by experiment, the prevailing doctrine of the equivocal generation of insects, or that from corruption; though where he was unable to show the means of reproduction, he had recourse to a paradoxical hypothesis of his own. Redi also enlarged our knowledge of intestinal animals, and made some good experiments on the poison of vipers.[1079] Malpighi, who combated like Redi, the theory of the reproduction of organised bodies from mere corruption, has given one of the most complete treatises on the silkworm that we possess.[1080] |Swammerdam.| Swammerdam, a Dutch naturalist, abandoned his pursuits in human anatomy to follow up that of insects, and by his skill and patience in dissection made numerous discoveries in their structure. His General History of Insects 1669, contains a distribution into four classes, founded on their bodily forms and the metamorphoses they undergo. A posthumous work, Biblia Naturæ, not published till 1738, contains, says the Biographie Universelle, “a multitude of facts wholly unknown before Swammerdam; it is impossible to carry farther the anatomy of these little animals, or to be more exact in the description of the organs.”
[1079] Biogr. Univ. Tiraboschi, ix. 252.
[1080] Idem.
Lister. 19. Lister, an English physician, may be reckoned one of those who have done most to found the science of conchology by his Historia sive Synopsis Conchyliorum, in 1685; a work very copious and full of accurate delineations: and also by his three treatises on English animals, two of which relate to fluviatile and marine shells. The third, which is on spiders, is not less esteemed in entomology. Lister was also perhaps the first to distinguish the specific characters, such at least as are now reckoned specific, though probably not in his time, of the Asiatic and African elephant. “His works in natural history and comparative anatomy are justly esteemed, because he has shown himself an exact and sagacious observer, and has pointed out with correctness the natural relations of the animals that he describes.”[1081]
[1081] Biogr. Univ. Chalmers.
Comparative anatomy. 20. The beautiful science which bears the nonsensical name of comparative anatomy had but casually occupied the attention of the medical profession.[1082] It was to them, rather than to mere zoologists, that it owed, and indeed strictly must always owe, its discoveries, which had hitherto been very few. It was now more cultivated; and the relations of structure to the capacities of animal life became more striking, as their varieties were more fully understood; the grand theories of final causes found their most convincing arguments. In this period, I believe, comparative anatomy made an important progress, which in the earlier part of the eighteenth century was by no means equally rapid. France took the lead in these researches. “The number of papers on comparative anatomy,” says Dr. Thomson, “is greater in the memoirs of the French Academy than in our national publication. This was owing to the pains taken during the reign of Louis XIV. to furnish the Academy with proper animals, and the number of anatomists who received a salary, and of course devoted themselves to anatomical subjects.” There are however about twenty papers in the Philosophical Transactions before 1700 on this subject.[1083]
[1082] It is most probable that this term was originally designed to express a comparison between the human structure and that of brutes, though it might also mean one between different species of the latter. In the first sense it is never now used, and the second is but a small though important part of the science. Zootomy has been suggested as a better name, but it is not quite analogical to anatomy; and on the whole it seems as if we must remain with the old word, protesting against its propriety.
[1083] Thomson’s Hist. of Royal Society, p. 114.
Botany. 21. Botany, notwithstanding the gleams of philosophical light which occasionally illustrate the writings of Cæsalpin and Columna, had seldom gone farther than to name, to describe, and to delineate plants with a greater or less accuracy and copiousness. Yet it long had the advantage over zoology, and now when the latter made a considerable step in advance, it still continued to keep a-head. This is a period of great importance in botanical science. |Jungius.| Jungius of Hamburgh, whose posthumous Isagoge Phytoscopica was published in 1679, is said to have been the first in the seventeenth century who led the way to a better classification than that of Lobel; and Sprengel thinks that the English botanists were not unacquainted with his writings; Ray indeed owns his obligations to them.[1084]