130 LEEUWENHOEK AND HIS “LITTLE ANIMALS’”’ 
new glass phial (which I had bought on purpose) and 
besought him that, when he was in the sea, he would 
rinse it out twice or thrice and then fill it up with water. 
This having been carried out according to my orders, I 
tied the phial up tight with a clean bit of bladder: and 
on reaching home and examining the water, I perceived 
therein a little animal’ that was blackish, having a shape 
as if twere made of two globules. This little animal had 
a peculiar motion, after the manner of a very little flea, 
when seen, by the naked eye, jumping on a white paper ; 
yet ’twas only displaced, at every jump, within the com- 
pass of a coarse sand-grain, or thereabouts. It might 
right well be called a water-flea; but ’twas not so big, 
by a long way, as the eye of that little animal which 
Swammerdam calls the Water-flea.” 
I did also discover animalcules which were clear, of the 
same bigness as that first mentioned; but they had an 
oval figure, and their motion was snake-wise. 
Furthermore, I perceived yet a third sort, which were 
very slow in their motion. Their body was mouse-colour ; 
and they were also a bit on the oval side,’ save that a 
sharp little point stuck out (sting-fashion) * in front of the 
head, and another at the hind end. This sort was a bit 
bigger. 
And there was besides a fourth sort, rather longer than 
an oval. Yet all these animalcules were few in number, 
so that in a drop of water I could make out but 3 or 4, 
nay, sometimes but one. 
* Iam unable even to hazard a guess at the identity of this organism ; 
but, judging from its estimated size, it may well have been a protozoon. 
> i.e., Daphnia. Cf. p. 118, note 1. 
° mede hellende na de ovale kant MS. “clear towards the oval-point ”’ 
Phil. Trans.—an evident mistranslation. LL. means that their shape tended 
to be oval—not that they were clear at one end. I translate his colloquial 
old Dutch into its equivalent in modern conversational English. 
* angels gewijs MS. “‘angle-wise” Phil. Trans. Angel means a sting 
(e.g., that of a bee), not an angle (=hoek). lL. was probably thinking of the 
mouth-parts of a mosquito—which he also called (as the man-in-the-street 
still does) its “‘sting”’. ; 
ce 
