LETTER XXIX. 5 NOVEMBER 1716 297 
I can’t forbear adding here, that I have allowed water- 
animalcules, mixed with a little earthy matter, to lie dry 
in my closet for a whole winter: and when I put them 
again in water, I saw some of them unfold their limbs, 
which seemed to be wrapped up inside them, and swim 
about in the water.’ I have also observed that animal- 
cules, which really belong to the waters, are to be found 
in the soil in our meadows ;” and these animalcules are 
carried thither, along with particles of water, by strong 
winds, and come not only from the canals but even from 
the sea. And notwithstanding that most of these 
creatures are unable to stand the winter’s cold, and so die, 
yet some of them survive, to propagate their kind: and 
this has been their lot from the very beginning of things. 
Then a few lines further on we strike the following gem: 
Now I must tell you that there is, right at the back 
of my house, a small flat lead, on which the rain-water 
doesn’t dry up for several days after it hath rained. In 
this water I have many a time seen, among others, some 
very little roundish animalcules, of divers sizes, and 
whereof the bodies were round, and having a diameter, 
when full grown, of about thrice the diameter of one of 
those globules that make our blood red: and in their 
bodies you could distinctly make out four round globules. 
These creatures were so vastly multiplied in a few days, 
that I was dumbfounded at it. 
I was all agog to know how this multiplication might 
come to pass: and in the end I found out that these 
animalcules lived for no longer than 30 or 36 hours, and 
that they then fixed themselves upon the glass, and 
stopped there without moving: while soon after, their 
body burst asunder, and lay divided into eight portions: 
" These were probably Rotifers, though some may possibly have been 
encysted Ciliates. 
2 This is probably a record of the first observations ever made on soil- 
protozoa. 
