all his predecessors in the same field of labour; and this feeling we are in some measure enabled to gratify by the care of his biographer, Boerhaave, whose account is so satisfactory, that we cannot do better than nearly translate his own words. For the dissection of very minute objects, he had a small brass table, ingeniously constructed by an artist of Amsterdam, to which were attached two moveable brass arms. The upper part of these arms was so planned as to admit of a vertical motion, so that the operator could adjust their height to answer his purposes; one of them was designed to hold the object under examination, the other, the glasses through which it was to be viewed. These glasses were, of course, in great variety, as well as the manner in which they were fitted up into microscopes, and it was always a matter of great anxiety with Swammerdam to obtain them of the best possible substance and workmanship. It was his practice first to view the object under examination through a glass of comparatively small power, and to apply stronger ones gradually as he was becoming more familiar with its forms and appearance, a practice by which every observation was made subservient to the next, and the deceptive tendencies of different lights in a great measure guarded against. His skill and patience in constructing cutting instruments were remarkable, and it is, in a great degree, to their ingenious forms, and extreme delicacy, that much of his success is to be ascribed. His scissors were remarkably fine and sharp-pointed, and this was a favourite instrument with him, as he found it
