LETTER 39. 17 SEPTEMBER 1683 939 
matter how hard the salt be that I rub them with) never 
start bleeding. Yet notwithstanding, my teeth are not 
so cleaned thereby, but what there sticketh or groweth 
between some of my front ones and my grinders (whenever 
I inspected them with a magnifying mirror), a little 
white matter, which is as thick as if ’twere batter.” On 
examining this, I judged (albeit I could discern nought 
a-moving in it) that there yet were living animalcules 
therein. I have therefore mixed it, at divers times, with 
clean rain-water (in which there were no animalcules), 
and also with spittle, that I took out of my mouth, after 
ridding it of air-bubbles (lest the bubbles should make 
any motion in the spittle): and I then most always saw, 
with great wonder, that in the said matter there were 
many very little living* animalcules, very prettily 
a-moving. The biggest sort had the shape of Fig. A* 
[Plate XXIV]: these had a very strong and swift 
motion, and shot through the water (or spittle) like a 
pike * does through the water. ‘These were most always 
few in number. 
The second sort had the shape of Fig. B. These oft- 
times spun round like a top, and every now and then 
took a course like that shown between C and D: and 
these were far more in number. 
us elsewhere, however, that he sometimes suffered from toothache—to 
alleviate which he smoked a pipe of tobacco, which generally made him 
feel very sick. He also tells us later how some of his teeth decayed. 
‘ Nogtans printed version—omitted in MS. 
* beslagen meel MS. and Dutch printed version “wetted flower” Phil. 
Trans. (1684) “like a mixture of flour and water” Hoole farinae aqua 
subactae similem Latin edition. The 2nd Phil. Trans. version (1693) 
incorrectly calls this soft mealy material (materia alba) ‘‘a kind of gritty 
Matter.” 
* levende is here in the MS. but not in the printed version. 
* hadde de Fig: van A. MS. was van de Fig: A. printed version. 
® een snoek MS. and Dutch printed version. The Latin translator 
rendered this—with some justification—piscis lupus: which caused Loffler 
(1887, p. 5) to mistranslate it ‘‘ Rauwbfisch” (instead of Hecht). To “ shoot 
through the water like a pike” is a phrase commonly used by L. to describe 
any rapidly darting aquatic animalcule. 
