474 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. rANNOl68]. 



size of a sand. Those were like river eels, which wriggled very much; these 

 closing together would make a cloud, and separating again make it seem to dis- 

 perse. I found them also in the vas deferens, in the epididymis, and in the vas 

 praeparans. By these observations you may judge that the testicle is made on 

 purpose for the production of these animals, and to keep them till sent off. 

 How vast and almost incredible the number of these creatures is, you may 

 somewhat the better conceive by the calculation which I have hereunto annexed. 

 I have formerly said that in a quantity of the juice of the melt of a male cod- 

 fish, of the size of a small sand, there are contained more than 10,000 small 

 living creatures with long tails; and considering how many such quantities, viz. 

 of the size of a sand, might be contained in the whole melt, I was of opinion, 

 that the melt of one single codfish contained more living animals than there 

 were living men at one time upon the face of the earth. That which induced 

 me to be of this belief, was this following calculation. I conceive that 100 

 sands in length will make an inch, therefore in a cubic inch there will be 

 3,000,000 of such sands. And I have found the melt of a codfish to be about 

 the quantity of 15 cubic inches, it must therefore contain 15,000,000 of quan- 

 tities as large as a sand, now if there be 10,000 animals in each of those quan- 

 tities, as I have computed there will be in the whole 1 50,000,000,000. To 

 reckon now the number of men which may be on the face of the earth at once 

 by guess. There are in a great circle, or in the compass of the earth 5,400 

 Dutch miles, thence I collect there must be 9,276,2J8 square Dutch miles for 

 the earth's superficies. It is said ^ of the superficies of the earth are water, 

 and -^ only is land; i- therefore of the last number is 3,092,072, which is 

 the number of square miles of dry land on the surface of the earth : I suppose 

 ^ of this uninhabitable, and the other -^ only inhabited, which 4 contain 

 2,061, 382 square miles. According to the computation of N. N. the number 

 of people in Holland and West Friezland may be about 1,000,000. And if 

 all the rest of the habitable parts of the world were as populous as these, there 

 would be 13,385,000,000 of men at once on the face of the whole earth; but 

 in the melt of the codfish I have computed that there are 1 50,000,000,000 of 

 animals ; the number of these therefore will exceed the number of men more 

 than ten times.* 



On Firy Damps in Mines. By Mr. J. Beaumont. Philos. Collect. N° 1, p. 6. 

 About two miles on the south-east of Stony Easton, at a place near Mendip- 



* Tliis very computation ought to have made the author aware of the extreme improbability of 

 his opinion respecting the share which he ascribed to these his animalcula in the work of generation. 



