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rcafoning is very fpecious and plaufible, but too meta-* 
phyfical for a. natural hlftorian. Yet I cannot forbear 
relating one of the experiments which I tried in con- 
fequence of his difcovery, that animalcula were pro- 
duced in various infufions, notwithftanding thegreat- 
efl heat was given to the liquor. 
On the 25th of May, 1768, Fahrenheit’s thermo- 
meter 70 degrees, I boiled a potatoe in New- river 
put into the fame glafs feveral other dead flies, by which means 
this fpecies of Mucor was propagated fo plentifully, as to give 
me> an opportunity of frequently trying the fame expeiiment to 
my full fatisfaciion. 
Laftly, thofe jointed coralloid bodies, which Mr. Needham 
calls chaplets and pearl necklaces, I have feen frequently very 
diftindtly. Thefe appear not only on an infuflon of bruifed 
wheat, when it becomes putrid, but -on moft other bodies, that 
throw up a vifeid feum, and are in a ftate of putrefadUon. 
Thefe then are evidently no more than the moft common Mucor^ 
the feeds of which are every where floating in the air ; and bo- 
dies in this ftate afford them a proper and natural foil to grow 
upon. Here they fend downwards their fine tranfparent rami- 
fied roots into the moifture which they float upon, and from the 
upper part of the feum their jointed coralloid branches rife full of 
feed into little grove-like figures. When a fmall portion of thefe 
branches and feeds are put into a drop of the fame putrid water 
the feum floats upon, many of the millions of little animalcula, 
with which it abounds, immediately feize them as food, and 
turn them about with a variety of motions ; as in the experi- 
ment cn the feeds of the common niuftirooms ; either fingly or 
two or three feeds connected together, anfwering exadly to 
Mr. Needham’s defeription ; but evidently without any motion 
of their own, and confequently not animated. 
I am fatisfied Mr. Needham’s obfervations have convinced 
him long before this, that they muft be vegetables : for my part, 
1 own 1 have never feen a zoophyte extend its branches, and 
grow out of water. I hope I have already cleared up that point, 
in fhewing the abfurdity of Dr. Pallas’s Corallina terrejlrxsy 
Phil. Tranf. vol. LVII, p. 415. 
water 
