286 
LEEUWENHOEK AND HIS “‘ LITTLE ANIMALS ”’ 
At the end of the month of July, 1702, I was standing 
in front of my dwelling, beside the water’, which flowed 
with a gentle stream through our Town, and was very 
clear, and had almost the colour of the Maas water; when, 
as the sun shone bright, I saw something moving in it, 
which seemed to me a-glitter; and so I had a mind to try 
and find out what this shining matter was. 
In order to satisfy myself, I took a glass tube, having 
very near a foot’s length and a finger’s width, and after 
tying a string to it, I let it drop into the water; and when 
it was nearly half full, I pulled it out of the water and let 
it fall from a certain height straight down into the water, 
so that, being right under, the tube got filled with water.’ 
Examining this water with the magnifying-glass, I saw 
that divers sorts of animalcules were swimming about in 
it, whereof some were of a structure that I don’t remember 
to have ever before discovered in any waters. 
I viewed this water divers times one day, but couldn’t 
discover what occasioned the glittering that it had afore 
twas put in the glass tube. 
On the 4th of August, I saw, through a magnifying 
lens, that in eight or ten places there were particles 
sticking fast to the glass; so that though all the water, 
and consequently all the very small particles that were 
floating in it also, was moved (with a slight motion which 
I imparted to the tube)*, yet these particles remained 
stuck to the glass. 
This constrained me to examine them through the 
microscope, and I saw then that the particles looked like 
a complete bough off a tree, with its many twigs, as we 
might see it with the naked eye; some of them differing 
from others in the number of their twigs. 
1 j.e., the canal [in the Hippolytusbuurt |: so rendered by Chamberlayne. 
2 This passage is abbreviated by Chamberlayne. 
* This terminal bracket is not in the MS.—apparently owing to an over- 
sight: and the sentence, which is rather involved and disorderly in the 
original, I have had to rearrange somewhat in order to make its meaning 
clear. 
Chamberlayne’s words are a short paraphrase. 
