184 LEEUWENHOEK AND HIS “‘ LITTLE ANIMALS”’ 
The prospect of those small animalls have given great 
satisfaction to all Persons that have viewed them. His 
majesty * having been acquainted with it, was desirous to 
see them and very well pleasd with the Observation and 
mentiond your Name at the same time. I know not 
whether any of the ways I have here made use of for the 
Discovery of them may be in any thing like those with 
which you make your observations. But I have two or 3 
other ways which I shall shortly communicate,’ that doe 
farr exceed those I have here mentiond.’ 
Some important additional particulars regarding Hooke’s 
observations can be gathered from Birch’s History. He tells 
us* that at the meeting of the Society held on 1 November 
1677 O58), 
There were produced a great many exceedingly small and 
thin pipes of glass of various sizes, some ten times as big 
as the hair of aman’s head; others ten times less. These 
were made, in order to try a conjecture of Mr. Hooke 
propounded to the Society, that the discoveries, affirmed 
to be made by Mr. Leewenhoeck, were made by help of 
1678 (Roy. Soc. MSS.). The original, of which only a part is here copied, 
is in English. It is written in Hooke’s hand and signed “R.H.”’ I again 
expand the abbreviations in the original, for the reader's convenience. 
1 j.e., King Charles II of England, “ Founder” and Patron (Fundator et 
Patronus) of the Royal Society—as he is styled in the Charta secunda of 
1663. 
2 The communication will be found in Hooke’s Lect. & Collect. (1678), 
p. 89 et seqq. 
* This letter from Hooke is referred to by L. at the end of his own 
Letter 28, 25 April 1679, to N. Grew (Brieven I, p.13: first published in 
Dutch in 1686). As the 28th Letter deals largely with spermatozoa, it has 
often been erroneously inferred that Hooke demonstrated spermatozoa—not 
protozoa—to the King. But the correspondence between Hooke and L. 
affords no grounds for such an inference; and I have been unable to 
discover any evidence in support of the accepted belief that the Merry 
Monarch was once entertained at an exhibition of spermatozoa by the 
Royal Society (or any member thereof). This myth probably originated 
with Haller (Elementa [1765], VII, 523)—as Cole (1930, p. 14) has already 
noted. 
* Birch, Vol. III, p. 346. 
