ANIMALCULES IN RAIN 213 
both running forward and swimming, and that as 
plain as if you saw, with your bare eye, those little 
animals that the common man calls Water-fleas, swim- 
ming in the water.’ 
Now there lay against the glass, within the compass of 
a coarse grain of sand, more than a hundred particles 
that were of the bigness of the foresaid animalcules, 
which particles I divers times viewed one day, to discover 
if possible whether any living creature would come out of 
them,’ or turn up thereabouts; but how carefully soever 
I looked, yet could I discern no living creature among 
these particles, nor those lying hard by: until the 
28th of October, when I saw, among the particles last 
mentioned, a good five-and-twenty animalcules swimming 
forwards, as well as running upon the glass: and I did 
then discern two sorts of animalcules,® whereof the 
smallest appeared to me first shining, and then not 
shining: and their shininess, so I imagined, was observable 
whenas they swam with their back or uppermost part of 
the body turned towards my eye. These last animalcules 
had a quite different motion, in swimming forward, from 
those a bit bigger. As regards the particles that were 
fixed to the glass, I couldn’t see any change in ’em. 
I examined the said water for several days running, 
and I saw the smallest animalcules in such great plenty, 
both coursing upon the glass and swimming, at every 
spot where I cast my eye, that ‘twas amazing: and as I 
was holding the microscope in one hand, and in the other 
the glass tube (in which the water, owing to the width of 
the tube, was set in motion),* I invariably perceived that 
1 op het water MS. “in the ordinary Brooks and Canals ’’ Chamberlayne 
—a picturesque but inaccurate rendering of the original. 
2 
‘ 
ut de selve . . . soude voortkomen MS. “whether they were 
living Creatures’’ Chamberlayne. 
* Probably protozoa, but not identifiable. 
* i.e., by the warmth of his hand, producing convection-currents. 
18 
