96 



mucous layer (the stratum mucosum of botanists), 

 does not constitute the organs of the animalcules, 

 though the latter cannot live and propagate them- 

 selves but in the middle of them. Nevertheless , I 

 have often drawn them out of the gelatinous mass, 

 in order to place them in river -water, where they 

 lived a long time, without any appearance of diseased 

 alteration. 



Water, a solid substance, heat, a beginning putre- 

 faction, appear indispensable to the production and 

 propagation of the animalcules 5 and such conditions 

 are in fact always united. Without moisture, they 

 never live; a solid substance must offer a basis to 

 moisture , and , according to physical laws, the con- 

 tact of the one with the other generates heat, and 

 only by the simultaneous action of moisture and heat 

 can putrefaction take place. 



Though often found in the froth of rivulets and 

 rivers, they have not been generated there, but 

 floated off by the stream. These animalcules living 

 never in thermal water, they are only to be seen at 

 a few inches distance from the wells, and when 

 kept in glasses or pots, they soon retreat towards 

 the sides of the vessel. They are never found in 

 the limpid water of a cold spring, river or well, 

 nor of a hot spring, even if the water has reposed 

 for hours and days , so that we can consider as 

 erroneous, and suggested by a fondness for marvel- 

 lous things, the popular opinion, so generally spread, 

 that we swallow with common water innumerable 



