Whenever I found out anything remarkable, I have thought it my duty to put down my discovery on paper, so that all ingenious people might be informed thereof.
From Antonie van Leeuwenhoek
A man has always to be busy with his thoughts if anything is to be accomplished.
I must confess... I don't know any tongue but the Nether-Dutch.
If any person examines by the microscope that part towards the extremity of the spider's body from whence its thread proceeds, he will observe the spot to be, as it were, surrounded by five several protuberances or risings, each ending in a point and altogether forming a kind of enclosure.
How inscrutable and incomprehensible are the hidden works of Nature!
How little do we discover in comparison of those things which now are and forever will be hidden from our sight? The whole of which I am fully persuaded no one will ever be able to dive into, and to explain their causes and effects.
In treating of the oak, I have considered that the species of it growing in warm climates is superior to that which is produced in cold countries. But we must not imagine this to be the case with all woods; on the contrary, the fir timber grown in cold countries is superior to that produced in warm ones, where its growth is rapid.
I now found that the spider cannot fix its thread to anything without imprinting the hind part of its body on the place, by which pressure it emits an incredible number of excessively small threads diverging in every direction from whence we may conclude that as soon as the threads are exposed to the air, they lose their viscosity or gluey quality.
No one can pretend to say that a fish is ever killed by heat, for many kinds of fish, in the middle of summer, and in the burning heat of the sun, do either play, as it were, on the surface of the water, or hide themselves under the leaves, weeds, or other substances at the bottom.
We will admit that, out of the mud or sand which is found on the seashore or the beds of our rivers, at low water, shellfish or testaceous animals come forth, but it does not from thence by any means follow that they are produced without any regular course of generation.
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