THE EXPERIMENTS. 223 



But, to remove every doubt upon this fubjed:, 

 let us attend to the obfervations of others. Can 

 the adtive machines difcovered by Mr Needham 

 in the milt of the calmar be regarded as animals ? 

 Can we believe that eggs, which are adtive ma- 

 chines of another fpecies, are alfo animals ? If 

 we examine Leeuwenhoek's reprefentations of 

 the moving bodies found in many different fub- 

 ftances, will we not be fatisfied, at the firft in- 

 fpecStion, that they are not animals, fmce none 

 of them have any members, but are uniformly 

 either round or oval ? If we attend to what this 

 famous obferver has remarked concerning the 

 motion of thefe pretended animals, we muft be 

 convinced that he was wrong in regarding them 

 as real animals, and we will be more and more 

 confirmed in the opinion, that they are only 

 organic moving particles. We (hall give fome 

 examples. Leeuwenhoek * gires the figure of 

 the moving bodies in the feminal fluid of a male 

 frog. This figure reprefents nothing but a thin, 

 long body, pointed at one of the extremities* 

 Let us attend to what he fays concerning it : 



* Uno tempore caput (that is, the largeft ex- 



* tremity of the moving body) crafFius mihi 



* apparebat alio ; plerumque agnofcebam ani- 



* malculum baud ulterius quam a capite ad 

 ' medium corpus, ob caudae tenuitatem, et cum 

 ' idem animalculum paulo vehementius move- 



* retur (quod tamcn tardc ficbat) quafi volumine 



* quodam 

 • Tom. I. p. 51. 



