114 LEEUWENHOEK AND HIS ‘‘ LITTLE ANIMALS” 
it. It certainly is not very easy to read; but considering its 
supreme interest and importance, I am astonished that nobody 
hitherto appears to have made the attempt—nobody, that is, 
since Oldenburg: for Oldenburg evidently read the whole 
letter, and, though he published but a part, translated most 
of it—after a fashion. I have been through his manuscript 
translation carefully, but I have made no use of it in the 
preparation of my own: for it is much too abbreviated and 
confused for my purpose, and it is not free from errors. 
Oldenburg seems to have had a fair knowledge of Dutch, but 
the objects which Leeuwenhoek was endeavouring to describe 
were, of course, at that time entirely outside the experience 
of everybody but himself: and to understand his words, and 
to appreciate his efforts at description, it is necessary to be 
familiar with the things that he was studying as well as with 
his way of writing. 
Many protozoologists have, no doubt, read Oldenburg’s 
curtailed English version of Letter 18 in the Philosophical 
Transactions, but probably many more are acquainted with it 
through the work of Saville Kent. This author copied a 
considerable part of the letter into his well-known book on 
the ‘“ Infusoria’”’!; but I must remark that his quotations from 
Oldenburg’s translation do not altogether bear out his own 
statement that they were transcribed “with a faithful 
reproduction of their original quaint style of diction”. Kent's 
version is, indeed, by no means faithful to its prototype, and 
even contains several bad mistakes. For example, in one 
place Leeuwenhoek says that he put some water in a glass 
“on mijn comptoir’’—meaning “in my closet,” z.e. the office 
or study”? in which he worked and wrote (probably the 
counting-house in his shop). This frequently recurring phrase 
is usually rendered ‘“‘in musaeo meo”’ by the Latin translators, 
and appears—concordantly —as “dans mon cabinet” in the 
* Manual of the Infusoria (1880). Vol. I, pp. 3-7.—I may also note 
here that what purports to be another reproduction of the same letter, 
published recently by Knickerbocker (1927), is nothing more than a reprint 
of the garbled and condensed version printed in 1809 by Hutton, Shaw, 
and Pearson in their Abridgement of the Phil. Trans. It has no value either 
as a historical document or as an illustration of L.’s work. 
* Comptoir = reekenkamer, schrijfkamer, etc. (Meijer, Woordenschat p. 56). 
spe particulars regarding L.’s “ comptoir ” are given in Letter 16 (p. 125 
infra). 
