272 
‘ 
LEEUWENHOEK AND HIS ‘“‘ LITTLE ANIMALS ”’ 
Yet from the 10th of October till the 14th of the same 
month, I could perceive no living creature, how carefully 
soever I looked. But whereas I had till now always 
examined only the uppermost part of the water that was 
in the glass tube, on the 15th of October I inspected very 
narrowly the bottom of the glass tube (which was four 
inches long, and had a diameter of a third of an inch): 
and there I saw very many of the animalcules aforesaid, 
both fixed upon the glass and swimming forth; and 
many others sat so still upon the glass, that you might 
think they were not animalcules at all; but when one of 
’em moved, among the crowd, several others next to it 
did too. 
Not being content with these my observations, because 
I misdoubted me whether there might not well have been 
some water in this tube previously, and that from this 
source these animalcules had come, and had remained 
fixed to the glass, before I poured this rain into the glass 
tube: in order to satisfy myself hereof, I procured a glass 
tube that had lain full twenty years shut up in a dry 
chest, and whereof I was assured that neither the least 
water, nor anything but air, and what is therewithal 
contained in it, could have gotten into it. 
On the 18th of October it rained in the forenoon, after 
we had had several days of strong and stormy wind: and 
I once more caught the rain in the porcelain dish, and 
after flinging away the first two lots received in it, I 
poured the third lot of water into the glass tube. 
This last water I viewed many times ; but how curiously 
soever I looked, I could make out no living creature in it, 
though I saw particles stuck to the glass, that agreed in 
bigness and figure with the animalcules aforesaid : till the 
24th of October, when I discovered three animalcules that 
were running along and swimming forward against the 
glass, and not in a straight line, but with bendings and 
turnings as they went along: and the day after, I 
discovered like animalcules in quite ten different places, 
