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298 LEEUWENHOEK AND HIs ‘‘ LITTLE ANIMALS ”’ 
and these were actually young animalcules, for in five or 
six seconds some of them swam off. 
Inasmuch as one animalcule thus begets 8 little ones, 
and each of these again brings forth 8: then there would 
be produced, in the course of 9 days, two hundred and 
sixty-two thousand one hundred and forty-four animal- 
cules from a single animalcule: 
In 30 hours; or 13 (days, 70... 8 animalcules 
8 
cK opto eae © C7 Renee Pe 64 animalcules 
8 
in AF dayseese 512 
8 
in 6 <dayaeseer 4096 
8 
in 7% days.......82768 
8 
in 9 days....262144 animalcules. 
From the size and shape of these animalcules, as well as 
from their habitat and method of reproduction, it is obvious 
that they were some common phytoflagellate ; and it is highly 
probable, since no mention is made of their colour, that they 
were not the forms previously described (to wit, Haematococcus 
and Chlamydomonas). I have very little doubt that the 
description applies to Polytoma—of which it is, indeed, so far 
as it goes, an astonishingly good description.’ The division 
of the parent body into 4, and then into 8; the bursting of 
the enclosing membrane, and the swimming away of the 
daughter-individuals,—all this was observed and recorded 
with remarkable accuracy. 
How Leeuwenhoek was able to discover, with the limited 
means at his disposal, the facts which are here so simply set 
" Tam glad to find that Biitschli (Vol. II, p. 621) long ago arrived at the 
same conclusion. 
