LETTER OF 29 JUNE 1708 255 
I brought a thin glass tube suddenly with its one open 
end over the bottom of the porcelain cup, where most of the 
particles that had come off the tongue lay all of a heap; ’ 
with the idea that when the water entered the tube, a few 
particles from the tongue would also be carried upwards 
into the tube, so that I should thus again be enabled to 
view the particles off the tongue: in doing which,’ I saw 
an inconceivable number of exceeding small animalcules, 
and these of divers sorts. But far the greatest number 
was of one and the same bigness, yet this was so little 
that they could not be discerned but by great attention, 
through a very good magnifying-glass ; and most of these 
animalcules were abiding* where the said matter from 
the tongue lay, and I took into consideration whether the 
sald creatures might not indeed be getting their food from 
the particles of the tongue. And when these animalcules 
had been in the glass tube for about two hours, I perceived 
that a great many of ’em were dead. 
1 over hoop lagen MS. In the Phil. Trans. the translator transferred 
the adverb to the glass tube, making L. say that he “ hastily turned it 
upside down [my italics] into the bottom of the China Cup.” 
2 in welk doen MS. ‘and it happen’d as I wished” Phil. Trans. 
* haar . . . waren onthoudende MS. “ rendezvous’d ” Phil. Trans.— 
a good translation, but not a word that L. would have used. 
