LETTER 31. 138 may 1680 195 
examined the water that lay upon them, and in it I 
discovered! sundry little animals of the biggest sort 
previously seen in the sap aforesaid, and I saw some of 
a lesser sort lying dead: and when I examined these 
animalcules more narrowly, I found that they belonged to 
two kinds commonly present in ordinary waters.’ After 
this time, about the middle of April, it rained a whole day, 
and the night following ; and next morning, when the 
sun came out, I betook myself to my garden, and 
[examined]* the sap dripping froma vine-branch, which 
I had cut a few days before, in order to make it drip, at 
the same time tying or binding a strip of wash-leather 
around it, so that when it rained, the rain-water would 
stay caught in it, and not readily dry up, and thus get 
better mixed with the sap that dripped out: and in this 
water I discovered a few animalcules of the sort already 
described. I also examined the sap from a second vine, 
which I had likewise treated in the same way, and herein 
too I perceived the animalcules. I also visited a third 
vine, from which I had also previously cut off a branch, 
so that it would drip;* but this one I did not tie round 
with a leather, and I took the sap that ran down the 
branch at the place where it was most plentiful (namely, 
in a fork, where the shoot came off the stem); but I 
Aw «mA 
(Text-Fic. 2.] 
could perceive no living animalcules in it, though I saw in 
it, with admiration, many little chrysalises, or pupae, as 
in Fig. A A [see Text-fig. 2]: and although they were 
' gesien MS. ontdekt printed version. 
2 It is obviously impossible to identify these “animalcules”, though 
they were probably protozoa or bacteria of some sort. 
> A verb is here accidentally omitted from the MS. and also from the 
Dutch printed version. The sense evidently requires “examined” or 
“ observed’: and as the Latin translator supplied “ examinavi # do 
likewise. . 
4 These words (op dat die druipen soude) are in the printed version but not 
in the MS. 
