Acta eruditorum

The Acta Eruditorum was a Latin-language monthly first published in Leipzig in 1682 to provide announcements, abstracts, and excerpts from notable publications, especially new works, reviews, and small essays. The articles were from both German and foreign authors on everything from theology and  church history to physics and medicine as well as philosophy and geography.

It was founded and edited by Otto Mencke (image on right; click to enlarge). In the 1690's, the Acta became the champion of Leibniz in the dispute over who deserved credit for developing the calculus. His opponent, Newton, was championed by the Royal Society and Philosophical Transactions.

In Volume 8, the section on Leeuwenhoek had the same title as the volume with Letters 53 through 60 that Boutesteyn published in Leiden in the same year, 1689: Continuatio Epistolarum, Datarum Ad longe Celeberrimam Regiam Societatem Londinensem ab Antonio de Leeuwenhoek, Eiusdem Societas Membro. The editors boiled the eight letters on 124 pages down to three pages identifying and briefly describing Leeuwenhoek's observations shown in 10 of the 76 figures that had accompanied the letters in Continuatio Epistolarum. As with the 26 (out of 40) figures in the earlier volumes, these 10 were engraved on new plates with less detail and the same orientation as in the Continuatio Epistolarum. Were they drawn in a mirror? They were also re-numbered, consecutively, to match the numbers in the description.

The first two were addressed to Robert Hooke, the third to Francis Aston, and the rest of the Royal Society's members in general.