tfS PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [anNO 1705. 



In the month of September, I put a great many of the last mentioned ani- 

 malcula into a wide glass tube, which presently placed themselves on the sides 

 of the glass; whereupon pouring off the water, I then observed that several 

 animalcula, to the number of 18 or ly, lay by each other in the space of a 

 coarse sand; all which, when there remained no more water, closed themselves 

 up in a globular figure. Some of the bodies of these animalcula were so strongly 

 dried up, that one could see the wrinkles in them, and they were of a reddish 

 colour; a few others were so transparent, as if they had been little glass balls, 

 that if you held them up between your eye and the light, you might move your 

 fingers behind them, and see the motion through their bodies. 



After these animalcula had lain thus dried up a day or two, in an oval or 

 globular form, I poured some water into the glass tube, whereupon they pre- 

 sently sunk to the bottom ; and after the space of about half an hour they be- 

 gan to open and extend their bodies, and getting clear of the glass, to swim 

 about the water; excepting only two of the largest, that staid longer on the 

 sides of the glass, before they stretched out their bodies and swam away. 



After I had poured the water from them, in order to see how they brought 

 their bodies into that orbicular form ; viewing two of the largest of them, I 

 observed that they stretched out their bodies in the space of a minute, several 

 times, to an extraordinary length, and thrice opened the hinder part of their 

 bodies, and discharged some excrements, which, in the little water that re- 

 mained about them, were dissolved into small pellets, before they assumed their 

 round figure. 



In the month of October, before the dirt of the leaden gutter was quite dried 

 up, I took a handful of it, and laid it on a glazen earthen dish, in order to pre- 

 serve it. This foul stuff when dry, is as hard as clay ; so that the mites cannot 

 come at the animalcula, that are thus doubly shut up; upwards of 21 months 

 after I took some of this dry stuff, and infused it both in cold water that had 

 been boiled, and in rain-water newly fallen; whereupon the animalcula began 

 to show themselves, and that in great numbers; and soon after there appeared 

 two sorts of much smaller animalcula. 



Observations on staining the Fingers with a Solution of Silver in Aquafortis, &c. 

 By Mr. Anthony Van Leuwenhoeck, F.R.S. N° 295, p. 1794. 



It is well known that the skin and other parts of the animal body, are turned 

 black by a solution of silver in aquafortis, or nitrous aoid. 



