582 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



those of mammals circular. He reserved the name of 'globule' for those 

 of the human body, erroneously believing them to be spheroidal. 



Among his other discoveries bearing on physiology and medicine 

 may be mentioned: The branched character of heart muscles, the stripe 

 in voluntary muscles, the structure of the crystalline lens, the descrip- 

 tion ->f spermatozoa after they had been pointed out to him in 1674 by 

 Hamen, a medical student in Leyden, etc. Richardson dignifies him 

 with the title, 'The Founder of Histology,' but this, in view of the 

 work of his great contemporary, Malpighi, seems to me an overestimate. 



Turning his microscope in all directions, he examined water and 

 found it peopled with minute animalcules, those simple forms of ani- 

 mal life, propelled through the water by innumerable hair-like cilia, 

 extending from the body like banks of oars from a galley, except that 

 in many cases they extend from all surfaces. He saw not only the 

 animalcules, but also the cilia that move their bodies. 



His descriptions of the various forms of these animalcules are in- 

 teresting, and m strangely archaic language. Here is one of them, 

 changed from Dutch into English: 



"In the year 1675 I discovered living creatures in rain-water which 

 had stood but four days in a new earthern pot, glazed blew within. This 

 invited me to view this water with great attention, especially those 

 little animals appearing to me ten thousand times less than those rep- 

 resented by Mons. Swammerdam, and by him called waterflies or water- 

 lice, which, may be perceived in the water with the naked eye. The 

 first sort by me discovered in the said water, I divers times observed 

 to consist of five, six, seven or eight clear globules, without being able 

 to discover any film that held them together or contained them. When 

 these animalcula, or living atoms, did move they put forth two little 

 horns, continually moving themselves; the place between these two 

 horns was flat, though the rest of the body was roundish, sharpening 

 a little towards the end, where they had a tayle, near four times the 

 length of the whole body, of the thickness (by my microscope) of a 

 spider's web; at the end of which appeared a globule, of the bigness of 

 one of those which made up the body; which tayle I could not perceive 

 even in very clear water to be movM by them. These little creatures, 

 if they chanced to light upon the least filament or string, or other 

 such particle, of which there are many in the water, especially after 

 it has stood some days, tbey stook entangled therein, extending their 

 body in a long round, and striving to dis-entangle their tayle; whereby 

 it came to pass, that their whole body lept back towards the globule of 

 the tayle, which then rolled together serpent-like, and after the man- 

 ner of copper or iron wire, that having been wound around a stick, and 

 unwound again, retains those windings and turnings,"* etc. 



"Any one who has examined under the microscope the well-known 

 bull animalcule will recognize in this first description of it the stalk 



* 'Kent's Manual of the Infusoria.' Vol. 1, p. 3. Taken from the 'Philosophical 

 Transactions' for the rear 1677. 



