Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.15746

    Physiology of an ash tree, seeds and leaves

    Date
    13 July 1685
    Creator
    Unknown, Artist
    Object type
    Archive reference number
    Manuscript page number
    p15
    Material
    Dimensions
    height (page): 390mm
    width (page): 240mm
    Subject
    Description
    Six images in a letter by Antoni van Leeuwenhoek to the Fellows of the Royal Society.

    Fig. 1 (the large full page drawing): leaf of an ash tree.
    From the top left downwards:
    Fig. 2: the leaves Van Leeuwenhoek found inside a seed
    Fig. 3: top side of leaves coming out of a cherry pip
    Fig. 5: top side of leaves coming out of an almond
    Fig. 7: the inside of a hazelnut
    Fig. 8: top side of leaves coming out of an apple pip.

    Originally there were 19 images belonging to this letter. They were published in the Dutch and Latin editions of his letters.
    Object history
    At the meeting of the Royal Society on 3 November 1685, ‘A letter of Mr. Leewenhoeck, dated July 13, 1685, was read, shewing, that as in the seeds of plants and trees the young plant or tree is contained with all its parts, as leaves, vessels, body, root; so in all animal productions the animalcule contains the figure of the animal; it seeming consonant to nature, that the seed of the body of the thing be contained in a very little room’ (Birch 4:426).

    A. Leeuwenhoek, ‘Concerning seeds of plants, with observations on the manner of the propagation of the plants and animals’, Phil. Trans. vol. 17, no. 199 (April 1693), pp. 700-08. With 13 images.

    A. van Leeuwenhoek, Ontledingen en Ontdekkingen van het Begin der Planten in de Zaden van Boomen (C. Boutesteyn. Leyden, 1685), pp. 3-32. With 19 images.

    Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, Anatomia Seu interiora Rerum, Cum Animatarum tum Inanimatarum, Ope & beneficio [sic] exquisitissimorum Microscopiorum Detecta, variisque experimentis demonstrata [etc.] (Leiden: C. Boutesteyn, 1687), pp. 58-81. With 19 images.
    Related fellows
    Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (1632 - 1723, Dutch) , Naturalist
    Associated place
    <The World>
       > Europe
          > Netherlands
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