262 LEEUWENHOEK AND HIS ‘‘ LITTLE ANIMALS ” 
be it never so small, is as it were endowed with its 
inclosed plant‘); so can we now be more assured than we 
ever before were heretofore * concerning the generation of 
all things. For my part, I am fully persuaded that the 
little round bodies, which are found in the bigger ones, 
serve as seeds; and that without them these big round 
bodies couldn’t be produced.° 
In the summer I divers times applied myself to the 
study of the waters lying around our town, the last 
occasion being on the 8th of October 1699: but I could 
satisfy myself no further in this matter. 
The remainder of this letter contains no other observations 
on Protozoa: and the next reference to any of these organisms 
occurs some five months later, when Leeuwenhoek very briefly 
mentions and depicts the shell of a Foraminiferan, which he 
had found in the stomach of ashrimp. He did not, of course, 
know that it was the shell of a protozoon: but as this is the 
only mention—so far as I am aware—of any Rhizopod in the 
whole of his writings, I will quote the passage. After 
discussing the anatomy of the shrimp, he describes what he 
had found in shrimps’ stomachs, and adds: 
In some of their stomachs I also discovered very little 
snail-shells, which, because of their roundness, I called 
1 Demonstrated by L. elsewhere. 
2 te vooren . . . tot nog toe—redundant in the original. 
* The foregoing description of Volvox, though perfectly intelligible in the 
original, is somewhat obscured by the circumstance that L. uses the same 
word (deeltjens=particles) throughout to denote the mother-colonies, the 
daughter-colonies, and the individual flagellates. To make his meaning 
plain I have therefore substituted “ body”’, " bigger particle ’ ’, ete., for 
‘particle”’, where it is necessary to distinguish the “ particles’’ of different 
categories. The Latin translator took a like liberty with his original, and 
rendered deeltjens by particulae rotundae, particulae majusculae, particulae 
minores, etc., aS occasion required. 
“ From Letter 125. 2 June 1700. To Frederik Adriaan, Baron van 
Rhede: [Dutch] in Brieven, Tde pete p. 196 (1702) ; atoll in Opera 
Omnia (Epist. Soc. Reg.), II, p. 186 (1719). No MS., and not in Pail. 
Trans. The Latin translation is wrongly dated January 2 (postridie Kal. 
Jan. 1700). An English version of the letter will be found in Hoole (1807), 
Vol. II, p. 266—the passage cited being on pp. 271-2. 
