"In the year 1675 I discovered living creatures in rain-water which had stood but four days in a new earthern pot, glazed 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 waterflies or waterlice, 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 five, six, seven or eight clear globules, without being able to discover any film that held them together or contained them. When these animalcula, or living atoms, did move they put forth two little horns, continually 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 microscope) of a spider's web; at the end of which appeared a globule, of the bigness of one of those which made up the body; which tayle I could not perceive even in very clear water to be mov'd 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 has stood some days, they stook entangled therein, extending their body in a long round, and striving to dis-entangle their tayle; whereby it came to pass, that their whole body lept back towards the globule of the tayle, which then rolled together serpent-like, and after the manner of copper or iron wire, that having been wound around a stick, and unwound again, retains those windings and turnings," ^[1] etc.