page_title: Timeline of zoology
section_title: 17th century
hierarchical_section_title: Timeline of zoology / Modern world / 17th century
context_page_description: A timeline of the history of zoology.
context_section_description: 1600. In Italy a spider scare lead to hysteria and the tarantella dance by which the body cures itself through physical exertions.
  1602. Ulisse Aldrovandi (Italian, 1522–1605) wrote De Animalibus Insectis. This and his other works include much nonsense, but he used wing and leg morphology to construct his classification of insects. He is more highly regarded for his ornithological contributions.
  1604–1614. Francisco Hernández de Toledo (Spanish) was sent to study Mexican biota in 1593–1600, by Philip II of Spain. His notes were published in Mexico in 1604 and 1614, describing many animals for the first time: coyote, buffalo, axolotl, porcupine, pronghorn antelope, horned lizard, bison, peccary and the toucan. He also figured many animals for the first time: ocelot, rattlesnake, manatee, alligator, armadillo, and the pelican.
  1607 (1612?). Captain John Smith (English), head of the Jamestown colony, wrote A Map of Virginia in which he describes the physical features of the country, its climate, plants and animals, and inhabitants. He describes the raccoon, muskrat, flying squirrel, as well as a score of animals, all well identifiable. (In 1609 the Jamestown, Virginia, colony was almost lost when settlers found that their stores had been devoured by rats from English ships.)
  1617. Garcilaso de la Vega (Peruvian Spanish, 1539–1617) wrote Royal Commentaries of Peru, containing descriptions of the condor, ocelots, puma, viscacha, tapir, rhea, skunk, llama, huanaco, paca, and vicuña.
  1620? North American colonists probably introduced the European honeybee, Apis mellifera, into Virginia. By the 1640s these insects were also in Massachusetts. They became feral and advanced through eastern North America before the settlers.
  1628. William Harvey (English, 1578–1657) published Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus (1628) with the doctrine of the circulation of blood (an inference made by him in about 1616).
  1634. William Wood (English) wrote New England Prospect (1634) in which he describes New England's fauna.
  1637. Thomas Morton (English, c. 1579–1647) wrote New English Canaan (1637) with treatments of 26 species of mammals, 32 birds, 20 fishes and 8 marine invertebrates.
  1648. Georg Marcgrave (?–1644) was a German astronomer working for Johann Moritz, Count Maurice of Nassau, in the Dutch colony set up in northeastern Brazil. His Historia Naturalis Brasiliae (1648) contains the best early descriptions of many Brazilian animals. Marcgrave used Tupi names that were later Latinized by Linnaeus in the 13th edition of the Systema Naturae. The biological and linguistic data could have come from Moraes, a Brazilian Jesuit priest turned apostate.
  1651. William Harvey published Exercitationes de Generatione Animalium (1651) with the aphorism Ex ovo omnia on the title page.
  1661. Marcello Malpighi (Italian, 1628–1694) discovered capillaries (1661), structures predicted to exist by Harvey some thirty years earlier. Malpighi was the founder of microanatomy. He studied, among other things, the anatomy of the silkworm (1669) and the development of the chick (1672).
  1662. John Graunt (English) provided the beginnings of demography with his Natural and Political Observations ... made upon the Bills of Mortality (1662). His speculations on Adam's and Eve's descendants and their growth rates showed an understanding of geometrical population increase. He found that more males than females were born, a fact considered by Sir Matthew Hale as providential for the "needs of warfare".
  1665. Robert Hooke (English, 1635–1703) wrote Micrographia (1665, 88 plates), with his early microscopic studies. He coined the term "cell".
  1668. Francesco Redi (Italian, 1621–1697) wrote Esperienze Intorno alla Generazione degli Insetti (1668) and De animaculis vivis quae in corpribus animalium vivorum reperiuntur (1708). His refutation of spontaneous generation in flies is still considered a model in experimentation.
  1669. Jan Swammerdam (Dutch, 1637–1680) wrote Historia Insectorum Generalis (1669) describing metamorphosis in insects and suppor
caption: Title plate of Historia Naturalis Brasiliae
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