The merits of Willughby as a natural historian still continue to be recognized. He was a most accomplished zoologist, and he gave Ray and Linnæus the method of classification of animals which is usually associated with their names. Ray acknowledged this, and he says that he found among his friend’s manuscripts the histories of beasts and insects, no less than of birds and fishes, “digested with a method of his own.” He was not a simple wealthy and intelligent amateur, for he was master to one of the greatest naturalists. Ray, in editing Willughby’s “Book on Birds,” gives a most touching preface to the memory of his friend. He says, “He was from childhood addicted to study, and ever since he came to the use of reason, so great a husbander of his time, as not willingly to lose, or let slip unoccupied, the least fragment of it; detesting no vice more than idleness, which he looked on as the parent and source of all others. Of his skill in natural philosophy, chiefly the history of animals, I shall say no more at present, but that it hath not yet been my hap to meet with any man, whether in England or beyond seas, of so general and comprehensive knowledge therein.” A very different career, but one which has had a greater general influence on natural history, was that of John Swammerdam, who was born at Amsterdam, in 1637, his father being an apothecary. His grandfather, Jacob Dirkz, was born in the village of Swammerdam, near Leyden, and his father, a well-to-do apothecary, lived there and took his name from the village. He married Berendina Corvera and settled at Amsterdam. The family lived in comfort, and the little one was destined, like many other naturalists, to the Church. His education consisted of sound Latin and Greek, and when he became old enough, he began to feel that there were responsibilities about his future office as a clergyman, which he did not think he could fulfil. Holland at that time was in a religious ferment, and sects of all kinds existed, religion being more talked about than practised. The lad, as he grew up, desired to follow in his father’s footsteps, and to learn the healing art; but his genius led him to the study of nature. Before he was fifteen years of age, he began to make collections of natural history objects, and whenever he could get away from home, and spare time from his medical studies, he pursued his favourite employment, searching the woods and fields, the sand-hills and muddy shores, the lakes, rivers, and canals, for insects, worms, and molluscs, until he acquired, even as a youth, a more extensive knowledge of the lower animals than all the naturalists who had preceded him. In 1661 he went to Leyden and studied surgery and anatomy. In this last he excelled, and became celebrated for his methods of preserving dissections. Then he went to Saumur, in France, and to Paris, where he gained the friendship of Thévenot the traveller, who was his patron