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264 LEEUWENHOEK AND HIS ‘‘ LITTLE ANIMALS ”’ 
and a breadth of seven inches, some rain-water had 
remained standing, which had a red colour; and as it 
occurred to me that this redness might well be caused by 
red animalcules (as I had indeed seen come about in 
muddy ditches), I took a drop or so of this water and 
looked at it through the microscope; and I discovered a 
creat many animalcules* that were red, and others that 
were green, whereof the biggest looked no bigger through 
the microscope than coarse sand doth to your naked eye, 
and others smaller and smaller, each after its kind. 
These animalcules were for the most part round, and 
the green ones were somewhat yellowish in the middle of 
their bodies. 
Their bodies seemed to be composed of particles that 
presented an oval figure; and therewithal they had short 
thin instruments which stuck out a little way from the 
round contour, and wherewith they performed the motions 
of rolling round and going forward ;* and when they took a 
rest, and fixed themselves to the glass, they looked like a 
pear with a short stalk; but this stalk,’ on curious examina- 
tion, was split at the end, or divided into two, and ’twas 
with these two parts that the animalcules fixed ’emselves 
fast to the glass.” 
that falls upon the Houses is by Pipes and Gutters conveyed into a Cistern, 
and there reserved for the uses of the House, as at Venice in Italy.” It 
would appear, therefore, that gutters were not commonly installed on 
English houses at that date. (See Ray, 1673; p. 53.) 
1 The description which follows obviously refers to the Phytoflagellate 
Haematococcus pluvialis (=Sphaerella lacustris), which is very commonly 
found in gutters. This is the first account of this organism. The smaller 
green ones were probably, for the most part, Chlamydomonas—equally 
common in this situation: vide infra. 
2 waar medeze een omwentelende beweginge en voortgang te weeg bragten: 
“by means of which they caused a kind of circular motion and current in 
the water’—Hoole. This mistranslation entirely spoils the sense of this 
important passage describing the action of the flagella. 
® Hoole here interpolates “or rather this tail’—which is not in the 
original, and shows that he did not understand what L. was talking about. 
* This is a remarkably good observation of the locomotory organs of 
Haematococcus, which possesses two anterior flagella that often adhere to 
one another for a variable length at their proximal ends. 
