HOOKE’S CONFIRMATIONS 183 
barly oats pease and several other graines,' and having 
fitted up some microscopes which had layne a long 
while neglected, I having been by other urgent occupa- 
tions diverted from making further inquirys with that 
Instrument, I began to examine all those severall Liquors 
and though I could discover divers very small creatures 
swimming up and down in every one of those steepings 
and even in Raine it self and that they had various 
shapes & differing motions, yet I found none soe ex- 
ceedingly filled and stuffed as it were with them as was 
the water in which some cornes of pepper had been 
steeped. Of this the President & all the members 
present were satisfyed & it seems very wonderfull that 
there should be such an infinite number of animalls in 
soe imperceptible a quantity of matter. That these 
animalls should be soe perfectly shaped & indeed with 
such curious organs of motion as to be able to move 
nimbly, to turne, stay, accelerate & retard their progresse 
at pleasure. and it was not less surprising to find that 
these were gygantick monsters in comparison of a lesser 
sort which almost filled the water. 
It seems clear that the ‘“gygantick monsters’’ were 
protozoa, while those of the “lesser sort” were bacteria. The 
foregoing lines contain, I believe, the first mention of the 
discovery of any of these organisms in infusions of wheat, 
barley, oats, and peas: for none of these are recorded by 
Leeuwenhoek as having been used in making the “ steepings 4 
employed in his own experiments. It is therefore unfortunate 
that Hooke—so far as I can ascertain—never wrote any 
further descriptions of the organisms which he discovered. 
Rumours of these remarkable discoveries spread, it would 
appear, into even the highest circles : for in another letter from 
Hooke to Leeuwenhoek, written a little later, the following 
passage occurs *: 
1 At a slightly later date—at a meeting of the Society on 7 March 
1678—Hooke also demonstrated the presence of “ animalcules ” in infusions 
of aniseeds and coffee. See Birch, Vol. TEE paso. 
2 MS. letter (unpublished), R. Hooke to Leeuwenhoek, dated 18 April 
