LIFE OF THE AUTHOR.

...it depicts most accurately the reciprocal mating of the shelled snail, which is a hermaphrodite. Against this dissertation of his, Joannes Baptista a Lamfweerde wrote a book with great effort, but with less happy results, to which he gave the title Expiration of Swammerdam's Respiration. For if anything less than correct has perhaps crept into our man’s little book, it will be pardoned by fair judges because of the beauty of the good things that excel everywhere in the work. He was already diligently cultivating the art by which he dried parts of the body, having first evacuated them properly and then inflated them with air, so that they would retain this stable and firm form, and by this art they could later be observed and described most accurately. A discovery truly most useful in the art, for erecting things that have collapsed and rotted, or are confused by being filled with wax. Thus, he cultivated anatomy most keenly, faithfully maintaining a relationship with the most famous Van Horne. But, having been seized by a quartan fever in this same year, he was weakened as much as possible, to the point of completely wasting away; for that reason, he was forced to abstain from anatomical studies. Refreshed somewhat from the dire disease, for the two years that followed, he submerged himself so entirely into the investigation of insects that he touched nothing at all of anatomy. It happened in the year 1668 that the Grand Duke of Tuscany, for the sake of visiting our fatherland, was present in the Republic, accompanied by Thevenot, and examined the Swammerdam treasures, both of father and son, with intent eyes and sharp vision for seeing natural things. He then displayed his anatomical dissections of insects to the most elegant spectator of such things, the Tuscan Prince. At this, the most skillful judge of the arts and most devoted lover of natural things was amazed. And then, most of all, when our author, in the presence of Magalotti and Thevenot, showed the great hero how a butterfly lies hidden, with all its folded parts, within the caterpillar itself; while, with incredible skill and instruments subtle beyond belief, having separated the covering of the exuviae cast-off skins, he extracted the hidden butterfly from its hiding place, and explained its obstructed parts most distinctly and so clearly that what was hidden was manifested most lucidly. The Most Serene Prince indeed offered our author twelve thousand florins for those treasures which were his own property; however, on the condition that he himself would bring them to Tuscany and then live at the court. The Prince was wise, for he thought that these things would soon perish unless such an artist and vigilant guardian were himself present to preserve them; he foresaw that the joy would not be lasting for him as a possessor if the great master were absent, the only one who could curiously point out and explain each memorable detail. Swammerdam, on the other hand, detested nothing more than court life. He also desperately loved the freedom of thinking and discussing sacred matters, and of practicing his religion according to the dictates of his own mind, not by the authority and command of another: therefore, none of this was done. But in the meantime, while he was dissecting a huge sturgeon, he found in it...