LETTER 149. 25 DECEMBER 1702 O77 
with a needle, one after the other, as nicely as I was able 
to, and put them in a glass tube of a finger’s breadth, 
that was filled to the top with water, and also in a 
smaller glass tube, and suffered their little roots to sink 
down gently; and then examining these roots with the 
microscope, I beheld with wonder many little animals 
of divers kinds, which escape our naked eye; whereof 
two sorts had long tails,* wherewith they were linked fast 
to the little roots of the duckweed. In structure these 
little animals were fashioned like a bell, and at the round 
opening they made such a stir, that the particles in the 
water thereabout were set in motion thereby, so that on 
but two occasions was I able to discern the little instru- 
ments* with which they brought about this motion. And 
though I must have seen quite 20 of these little animals 
on their long tails alongside one another very gently 
moving, with outstretcht bodies and straitened-out tails ; 
yet in an instant, as it were, they pulled their bodies and 
their tails together, and no sooner had they contracted 
their bodies and tails, than they began to stick their tails 
out again very leisurely, and stayed thus some time 
continuing their gentle motion: which sight I found 
mightily diverting. 
I got drawings made of some of these animalcules, as 
they appeared when fastened to the root of a bit of duck- 
weed. [See Plate XXVIII.*| 
Fig. 1, ABC shows a bit of duckweed of ordinary 
bigness, as it looked, when lying out of * ne water, to the 
ne eye of my ME elAneTE, 
1 Vorticellids. Cf. p. 118 supra. 
2 ““T could not see those instruments. ... Chamberlayne. This is 
not a correct rendering. L. says “soo dat ik maar twee maal hebbe 
geste .: .” 
* The figures on the Plate in Phil. Trans. were renumbered 6-12 (other 
illustrations having been added); but I have here altered their numbers to 
agree with L.’s original drawings and descriptions. Fig. 7 [12] depicts a 
leaf of duckweed not mentioned in the passages here translated. 
* buijten het water MS. “upon the water’? Chamberlayne. 
