I had got the foresaid water taken out of the ditches and runnels on the 30th of August: and on coming home, while I was busy looking at the multifarious very little animalcules a-swimming in this water, I saw floating in it, and seeming to move of themselves, a great many green round particles, of the bigness of sand grains.

When I brought these little bodies before the microscope, I saw that they were not simply round, but that their outermost membrane was everywhere beset with many little projecting particles … all orderly arranged and at equal distances from one another; so that upon so small a body there did stand a full two thousand of the said projecting particles.

This was for me a pleasant sight, because the little bodies aforesaid, how oftsoever I looked upon them, never lay still; and because their progression was brought about by a rolling motion. …

Each of these little bodies had enclosed within it 5, 6, 7, nay, some even 12, very little round globules, in structure like to the body itself wherein they were contained.

While I was keeping watch, for a good time, on one of the biggest round bodies … I noticed that in its outermost part an opening appeared, out of which one of the inclosed round globules, having a fine green colour, dropt out, and took on the same motion in the water as the body out of which it came. … soon after a second globule, and presently a third, dropt out of it; and so one after another till they were all out, and each took on its proper motion. …