VOL. XXllI.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 35 



are most conspicuous about the head and hinder parts, where are also some bristles 

 longer than the feet, which appear like a tail: a shows one of these with the 

 back, and bone with the belly towards the eye; and in c and d it is represented 

 as it often appears in other positions. I put some short shreds of my hair into 

 their water, to compare their magnitudes by, and saw that they could use their 

 feet in running as well as swimming, for they would often stand on a hair, and 

 go on il forward and backward from end to end, often stooping down, and 

 bending themselves in several postures. 



Among these are commonly another sort, but not above -f of their size, 

 whose feet arenlso very visible; some of them are shaped almost like a flounder, 

 and others are rounder behind; for by their motions and actions I judge them 

 the same animals. These also will stand and run on a hair, or any thing in the 

 water; they are marked ab fig. g. I have also seen them double as at c, and 

 so go forward, like flies in copulation. I was surprised at the fist view of this, 

 thinking it a single animal of that shape, but have since often observed them 

 both join and separate, and two of them following a 3d, sometimes the first, 

 and sometimes the 2d laying hold of it, and driving off the other. The little 

 feet of these animalcules are most distinguishable when the water is just all 

 evaporated; for, being then stranded, they cannot change their place; and at 

 that time you may see them move their feet very nimbly, and distinguish them 

 some little time after the water is evaporated. 



I thought those which I called capillary eels had been peculiar to pepper- 

 water; but have since observed the same, though but few, in some stagnant 

 water which drained from a horse dunghill. This liquor was mum-coloured, 

 and the most pregnant of all that I had ever seen, and it would seem incredible 

 to say what a prodigious number of all sorts I estimated to be in a quantity of 

 it of the size of a pepper-corn; for they appeared as thick as bees in a swarm, 

 or ants on a hillock ; so that I was obliged to dilute the water, to observe the 

 particular sorts. I found in this not only almost all the animalcula, seen in the 

 other infusions, but many sorts which I never met with before. Among them 

 were in great plenty those which are represented in h: their extreme parts ap- 

 pear bright, and the middle dark, which seems beset with bristles; their tail is 

 pointed with a long sprig at its end, and their motion is slow and waddling. 



But the prettiest object was a great number of a kind of eels, which appear 

 most distinctly when the water is almost dried, which make brisk shoots, and 

 have a pretty wriggling motion; they are of different lengths, and are abo,ut the 

 thickness of what I call capillary eels. Some of them are shown at k, witn some 

 of the capillary eels among them, the better to judge of their proportions. 



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