Book Description

The twelfth of the 20-volume set compiled and annotated by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences and Letters, contains 37 letters written between July 1696 and December 1699, during which time the Dutch naturalist resumed his correspondence with the Royal Society in London. Among the myriad topics he writes about are divining rods, liver flukes, analysis of a mineral from Sumatra, the hatching of snail eggs, the honey-dew produced by green flies, the cornea and eyes of a beetle, trachea of a gnat's brain, blood circulation in the tails of young eels and tadpoles, and his discovery of spermatozoa and reasoning that there must be male and female individuals. The book is bilingual throughout, including the short introduction, the biographical section, the list of Leeuwenhoek's measures, and index. The notes provide scientific philological, historical, and biographical information. Drawings are reproduced in eight pages of bandw plates. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR