VOL. I.IX.3 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 6l5 



his friend, Doctor de la Roche, of Geneva, informed me, the latter end of Fe- 

 bruary last, that it was from hempseed. 



I immediately procured hempseed from different seedsmen, in distant parts of 

 the town : some of it I put into New-river water, some into distilled water, and 

 some I put into very hard pump-water ; the result was, that in proportion to the 

 heat of the weather, or the warmth in which they were kept, there was an ap- 

 pearance of millions of minute animalcula in all the infusions ; and some time 

 after, some oval ones made tiieir appearance, as at pi. 18, fig. 1, b. c. These 

 were much larger than the first, which still continued ; these wriggled to and fro 

 in an undulatory motion, turning themselves round very quicklj, all the time that 

 they moved forwards. I was very attentive to see these animals divide them- 

 selves ; and at last I perceived a few of the appearance of Fig. 1, o, as it is re- 

 presented by the first magnifier of Wilson's microscope; but I am so well con- 

 vinced by experience, that they would separate, that I did not wait to see the 

 operation : however, as the following sketches, which I have drawn from 5 other 

 species, will very fully explain this extraordinary phenomenon, there will be no 

 difficulty in conceiving the manner of the first. See fig. 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. 



The proportion of the number of the animals, which I have observed to di- 

 vide in this manner, to the rest, is scarcely 1 to 50 : so that it appears rather to 

 arise from hurts received by some few animalcula among the many, than to be 

 the natural manner in which these kind of animals multiply : especially if we 

 consider the infinite number of young ones which are visible to us through the 

 transparent skins of their bodies, and even the young ones that are visible in 

 those young ones, while in the bodies of the old ones. 



But nothing more plainly shows them to be zoophytes than this circumstance ; 

 that when, by accident, the extremity of their bodies has been shrivelled for 

 want of a supply of fresh water, the applying more fresh water has given motion 

 to the part of the animal that was still alive ; by which means this shapeless 

 figure has continued to live and swim to and fro all the time it was supplied with 

 fresh water. 



I cannot finish this part of my remarks on these animals, without observing, 

 that the excellent Linnaeus has joined the beroe with the volvox, one of the 

 animalia infusoria. The beroe is a marine animal found on our coasts, of a 

 gelatinous, transparent nature, and of an oval or spherical form, about half an 

 inch to an inch diameter, divided like a melon into longitudinal ribs, each of 

 which is furnished with rows of minute fins, by means of which this animal, like 

 the animalia infusoria, can swim in all directions with great swiftness. In the 

 same manner I have seen most of these minute animals, which move so swift 

 that we could not account for it, without supposing such a provision of nature. 



