LETTER 18. VINEGAR Si 
was mixed with the vinegar, the animalcules that were in 
the pepper-water died instantly; albeit that I was unable 
to perceive that the little eels, which were in the vinegar, 
suffered any hurt from the pepper-water. 
At another time I took some 10 parts of the pepper- 
water last spoken of (at the time when the living creatures 
were most plentiful in it), and added to it about 7 part 108 
vinegar, containing living eels, or little worms. This 
vinegar I put in at the bottom, and not on the surface, of 
the pepper-water: and I took note that, the moment the 
vinegar was added to the pepper-water, the multifarious 
very little animalcules that were next the bottom, where 
the vinegar was, lay without any motion; and those 
animalcules lying further from the bottom became slower 
in their motion; and after the lapse of a little while, all 
the very little animalcules were dead: yet the motion of 
the little eels was no less in this water than when they 
were in the vinegar alone. This pepper-water and vinegar, 
which together equalled in quantity one big drop of 
water, I observed almost from day to day: and after the 
lapse of about 2 or 3 weeks, I saw that the little eels in 
this mixed water were greatly increased; for where at 
first I had seen but 10 eels, I now saw fully 200 of ’em. 
And among the rest I saw a great number of very little 
eels, near of one and the same bigness as one another, 
whose length, to my eye, equalled about 1 or t part of the 
biggest eels of all; but notwithstanding the further ob- 
servations that I made, I was able to discover no smaller 
eels, nor yet any particles that looked like the foresaid 
very little animalcules*; but they seemed all gone, without 
any remains being left over. Seeing this multitude of 
little eels (in the mixture of 10 parts pepper-water and 
1 part vinegar), I imagined that surely they were not 
Dee ——— 
1 Ags becomes evident later, L. means that he took 1 part of vinegar 
to 10 parts of pepper-water—not, as he apparently says, one-tenth of a 
part of the former to 10 parts of the latter. 
2 = . 
1.e., bacteria. 
