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inet, and found that cupboard bare. He rolled up his sleeves, he lectured about everything, he made huge public experiments and he awed his students because his deft hands always made these experiments turn out successfully. He sent here and there for an astounding array of queer beasts and strange plants and unknown birds—to fill up the empty Cabinet. He climbed dangerous mountains himself and brought back minerals and precious ores; he caught hammer-head sharks and snared gay-plumed fowl; he went on incredible collecting expeditions for his museum—and to work off that tormenting energy that made him so fantastically different from the popular picture of a calm scientist. He was a Roosevelt with all of Teddy's courage and appeal to the crowd, but with none of Teddy's gorgeous inaccuracy.

In the intervals of this hectic collecting and lecturing he shut himself in his laboratory with his stews and his microscopic animals, and made long experiments to show that these beasts obey nature's laws, just as men and horses and elephants are forced to follow them. He put drops of stews swarming with microbes on little pieces of glass and blew tobacco smoke at them and watched them eagerly with his lens. He cried out his delight as he saw them rush about trying to avoid the irritating smoke. He shot electric sparks at them and wondered at the way the little animals "became giddy" and spun about, and quickly died.

"The seeds or eggs of the little animals may be different from chicken eggs or frog's eggs or fish eggs—they may stand the heat of boiling water in my sealed flasks—but otherwise these little creatures are really no different from other animals!" he cried. Then just after that he had to take back his confident words. . . .

"Every beast on earth needs air to live, and I am going to show just how animal these little animals are by putting them in a vacuum—and watching them die," said Spallanzani to himself, alone one day in his laboratory. He cleverly drew out some very thin tubes of glass, like the ones Leeuwenhoek had