go PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO I696. 



gave the water that green colour, and were oval creatures, whose middle part 

 was of a grass green, but each end clear and transparent. They would con- 

 tract and dilate themselves, tumble over and over many times togetiier, and 

 then shoot away like fishes ; their head was at their broadest end, for they still 

 moved that way. They were very numerous, but yet so large, that I could 

 distinguish them very plainly with a glass that did not magnify very much. 

 Among these were interspersed many other smaller and transparent animals, 

 like those just mentioned, as found in the whitish scum that was on some rain- 

 water, which had stood a while uncovered. 



April the 29th, }6g6, I found another sort of creatures in the water, some 

 of which I had kept in a window in an open glass. They were as large as 3 

 of the others, with the green border about their middles, but these were per- 

 fectly clear and colourless. 



1 then also examined more accurately the belts or girdles of green which 

 were about the above animals, and found them to be composed of globules so 

 like tiie rows or spawn of fishes, that I could not but fancy they served for the 

 same use in these little animals ; for I found now, since April 27, many of them 

 without any thing at all of that green belt or girdle : others with it very much, 

 and that unequally diminished, and the water filled with a vast number of small 

 animals, which before I saw not there, and which I now considered as the 

 young animated fry, which the old ones had shed. I continued looking on 

 them at times, for 2 days, during which time the number of the old ones, with 

 the green girdles, decreased more and more ; and at last I could not see one 

 of them so encompassed, but they were all clear and colourless from end to 

 end. 



May the 18th, 1696, I looked on some of the surface of puddle water, which 

 was blueish, or rather of a changeable colour, between blue and red. In a 

 large quantity of it I found prodigious numbers of animals, and of such various 

 sizes, that I could not but admire their great number and variety ; but among 

 those were none with those girdles before-mentioned, either of green, or any 

 other colour. 



I then also examined the surface of some other puddle water, that looked a 

 little greenish and this I found stocked with such infinite numbers of animals 

 as I never yet saw, except in the genitura masculina of some creatures. Among 

 these there were many of a greenish colour, but they all moved about so swiftly, 

 and were so near to each other, that I could not distinguish whether the green 

 colour were all over their bodies, or whether it were only round their middles 

 in girdles, as before ; but from the roundness of their figure and their smallness, 

 I judged that they chiefly consisted of the young animated spawn of the above- 



