REPRODUCTION OF VOLVOX 261 
Now these last bigger bodies, when they had unbur- 
dened themselves of their contained particles, or when 
they broke asunder, were quite four times less than those 
wherefrom they issued: wherefore we may conclude that 
they had not reached their full growth, or gotten their 
right food. 
We have also noted that the said round bodies agree 
in their weight with water.’ This being so, they may be 
set in motion in the water with the least movement that 
it recelveth from the air. 
I thought fit to have one such body pictured, with its 
contained particles; as shown’ in Fig. 2,at EF. In this 
body, the inclosed round particles (which had so waxed in 
bigness that they were ready to be cast out) did not lie in 
such recular order as they did in those before described ; 
and as in this one there was not so continuous a motion, 
I imagine that this was simply due to the contained 
particles not all lying at an equal distance from the centre, 
so that the round body was heaviest on the side where the 
particle furthest from the centre was placed, whence its 
motion was somewhat hindered. 
For what purpose these round bodies are created we 
know not. But as I observed that the various round 
bodies, when mixt with a great many little animals* in 
the big bottle, were all vanished in the space of three 
days, I did well ponder whether they were not created to 
serve as food for such little animals. 
Now as we see that the oft-mentioned round bodies 
come into being not of themselves,* but by generation, as 
we know all plants and seeds do (inasmuch as every seed, 
1 i¢., have the same “specific gravity’? as water. This term was 
unknown, of course, to L., though the concept was familiar; and I 
therefore render his words literally and not too “ scientifically”. 
spontaneous generation ’’. 
2 See Plate XXVI. 
L. here means mosquito-larvae, crustacea, ete., —not protozoa. 
. ee . oe 
* niet wijt haar selven—meaning “not spontaneously”, or not by 
