In volume XVI of The Collected Letters of Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, 25 letters of Van Leeuwenhoek have been included, all of them written from July 1707 to June 1712. The letters were written to six distinct addressees. The larger part was addressed to the Royal Society in London in general (sixteen letters); and to three of its fellows in particular

This volume (the 14th of a series of 19) contains 21 letters written between August 1701 and March 1704. At least half of these letters were addressed to Fellows of the Royal Society in London. Every volume in the series contains the texts in the original Dutch and an English translation. The great range of subjects studied by Van Leeuwenhoek is reflected in these letters: instruments to measure water; pulmonary diseases; experiments relating to the solution of gold and silver; salt crystals and grains of sand; botanical work, such as duckweed and germination of orange pips; descriptions on protozoa; blood; spermatozoa; and health and hygiene, for example and harmfulness of tea and coffee and the benefits of cleaning teeth.;Volumes One to 13 are available at a reduced price from Swets and Zeitlinger.

This volume launches a new, eight-volume series entitled Theatrum Scientiarum on the history of science and the media which has arisen from the work of the Berlin special research project on "Performative Cultures" under the aegis of the Theatre Studies Department of the Free University. The volume examines the role of space in the constitution of knowledge in the early modern age. "Kunstkammern" (art and curiosities cabinets), laboratories and stages arose in the 17th century as instruments of research and representation. There is, however, still a lack of precise descriptions of the epistemic contribution made by material and immaterial space in the performance of knowledge. Therefore, the authors present a novel view of the conditions surrounding the creation of these spatial forms. Account is taken both of the institutional framework of these spaces and their placement within the history of ideas, the architectural models and the modular differentiations, and the scientific consequences of particular design decisions. Manifold paths are followed between the location of the observer in the representational space of science and the organization in time and space of sight, speech and action in the canon of European theatrical forms. Not only is an account given of the mutual architectural and intellectual influence of the spaces of knowledge and the performance spaces of art; they are also analyzed to ascertain what was possible in them and through them. This volume is the English translation of Kunstkammer, Laboratorium, Bühne (de Gruyter, Berlin, 2003).

The contents of the letters published here, again show the great range of subjects that occupied Van Leeuwenhoek: from sugar candy, the shape and crystal structure of diamonds, the dissolution of silver crystals in aqua fortis to gold dust from Guinea dissolved in aqua regia and the dissolution and separation of gold, silver, and copper. Every volume in the Series contains the texts in the original Dutch and an English translation. The great range of subjects studied by Van Leeuwenhoek is reflected in these letters: instruments to measure water, pulmonary diseases; experiments relating to the solution of gold and silver; salt crystals and grains of sand; botanical work, such as duckweed and germination of orange pips; description on protozoa. blood, spermatozoa and health and hygiene, for example and harmfulness of tea and coffee and the benefits of cleaning teeth.