1882.] 
Analyses of Books. 485 
The introductory part of the work fills more than two hundred 
pages, and not the least interesting portion consists of the early 
history of the subject. This, as may be supposed, is intimately 
connected with the invention and improvement of the micro- 
scope, brought into public notice about the year 1619. Nearly 
fifty years later we find the first account of any attempt at minute 
scientific investigation in Dr. Robert Hooke's “ Micrographia 
Illustrata.” The discovery of the minute organic beings, espe- 
cially treated on in this work, belongs to Antony van Leeuwen- 
hoek, whose first observations were published in the “ Philoso- 
phical Transactions,” vol. xii., No. 133, for the year 1677, under 
the following title : “Observations communicated to the publisher 
by Mr. Antony van Leeuwenhoek, in a Dutch letter of the 9th of 
October, 1676, here Englished, concerning Little Animals ob- 
served in Rain, Well, Sea, and Snow Water, as also in Water 
wherein Pepper had been Infused.” Part of Observation I. may 
be quoted for the sake of giving a specimen of the old Dutch- 
man’s quaint style : 
“ In the year 1675 I discovered living creatures in rain water 
which had stood but four days in a new earthen pot, glased blew 
within. This invited me to view this water with great attention, 
especially those little animals appearing to me ten thousand times 
less than those represented by Mons. Swammerdam, and by him 
called water-fleas or water-lice, which may be perceived in the 
water with the naked eye. The first sort by me discovered in 
the said water, I divers times observed to consist of 5, 6, 7, or 8 
clear globules, without being able to discover any film that held 
them together, or contained them. When these animalculce , or 
living atoms, did move, they put forth two little horns, con- 
tinually moving themselves ; the place between these two horns 
was flat, though the rest of the body was roundish, sharpening 
a little towards the end, where they had a tayle, near four times 
the length of the whole body, of the thickness (by my micro- 
scope) of a spider’s web, at the end of which appear’d a globul, 
of the bigness of one of those which made up the body, which 
tayl I could not perceive, even in very clear water, to be moved 
by them. These little creatures, if they chanced to light upon 
the least filament or string, or other such particle, of which there 
are many in the water, especially after it hath stood some days, 
they stook entangled therein, extending their body in a long 
round, and striving to disentangle their tayle ; whereby it came to 
pass, that their whole body kept back towards the globul of the 
tayle, which then rolled together serpent-like, and after the 
manner of copper or iron wire that, having been wound about a 
stick and unwound again, retains those windings and turnings. 
This motion of extension and contraction continued awhile, and 
I have seen several hundreds of these poor little creatures, 
within the space of a grain of gross sand, lie clustered together 
in a few filaments.” 
