Courtyards and back house

In the open court-yard of my house I have a well, which is about 15 feet deep, before one comes to the water. It is exposed to the South and encompassed with high walls, so that the Sun, though in Cancer, yet can hardly shine much upon its top. This water comes out of the ground, which is sandy, with such a power, that when I have laboured to empty the well, I could not so do it but there remained ever a foot's depth of water in it. This water is in Summer time so cold, that you cannot possibly endure your hand in it for any reasonable time.

Not thinking at all to meet with any living creatures in it, (it being of a good taste and clear) looking upon it in Sept. of the last year, I discover'd in it a great number of living animals very small, that were exceeding clear, and a little bigger than the smallest of all that I ever saw; and I think, that in an ‘ace’ weight of this water there was above 500 of those creatures, which were very quiet and moved without any jerks.

The Spanish soap aforesaid was put into our pump-water (coming from under the sand of our wells). This water is always somewhat brackish or salty.

I detected living creatures in water, that is ordinary rainwater that is collected from the roofs in stone basins or barrels, as well as in well-water that comes up in the sand, and in the gracht water that runs through this town and through the country.

The 26. May, it rained very hard. The rain growing somewhat less, I caused some of that Rain-water, running down from a slated roof, to be gather'd in a clean Glass, after it had been washed two or three times with the water. And in this I observ' d some few very little living creatures, and seeing them, I thought they might have been produced in the leaden-gutters in some water, that had there remain'd before.

In the court-yard of my house there are two vines and observing their growth to be such that a moisture dripped from their shoots, I examined this sap several times in succession, merely to discover living creatures in it. Most times I saw several sorts of living little animals in it, varying in size, nay, even little animals that I had observed before in divers sorts of water.

About 24 hours after I had dispatched my observations to Mr. Hooke, the vine-branches in my court-yard dripped no longer and the weather had become uncommonly warm, so that the vine-branches and the leathern tags as well were quite dry. After this it rained nearly the whole night, but in the morning the sun shone and in the afternoon there was once more rain. Seeing that the leathern tags were again wet through, I examined the water on these tags (with which the vine-branches, as remarked above, were nailed to the wall) and saw in it several little animals of the biggest sort, previously seen in the aforesaid sap, and I saw some of a smaller sort, lying dead.

After this time, about the middle of April, it rained a whole day and the night following, and the next morning when the sun shone I went into my garden and examined the sap dripping from a vinebranch which I had cut a few days before in order to make it drip, tying a strip of chamois to it or twining it around it, so that when it rained, the rain-water would be retained in it, and not easily dry up, and thus get better mixed with the above-mentioned dripping sap.

In this water, I discovered a few little animals of the sort described above. I also examined the sap from a second vine, which I had treated in the same way, and in this also discovered the little animals. I also went to a third vine, from which I had also previously cut off a branch, but had not tied round with chamois.

When, the other day, I stirred up an Ant-hill in my Garden, and there observed not only that one Ant's egg much exceeded another in size; but even that some Ants were still quite white, and appeared to lie quit motionless until they had come to their full size, I came to different thoughts as some other people have had, up to the present, about Ants.

After this I again searched the red-Ants' Nests in my garden, and again found therein the Ants, with their Eggs, Ant-worms, and pupae, in as great numbers as heretofore.

Many houses in our City are fitted with stone cisterns underground, into which the rain-water that falls on the roofs of the houses, is conducted by leaden gutters. I took some of this water (last year), and put finely ground pepper in it, and then poured this water into a glass tube, and in it I discovered little live animals. ...

But when I was busy in my garden, cutting few of the early asparagus, I happened to touch, between the fingers of the hand, a very small Nettle39), which caused me uncommon pain and swelling. This made me examine, once again, the Nettles through the microscope.

To save labouring in vain, I went, in the month of April 1686, to the garden of a Horticulturist whose principal work is the cultivation of Trees. And from among his Lime-trees I bought two wellgrowing Trees, which were five years old, and ordered at what time he was to deliver them to my house, towards which time I had also summoned my Gardener, in order that the Trees should not remain out of the earth too long, and that the small roots, which carry most of the nourishment to the Trees, should not dry up.

I got the Gardener to dig a hole for each Tree, to put the roots in, and made him plant the trunks of the Trees so close to the earth that they came to lie not more than two inches from the earth.

The roots thus being in the earth, I had a hole dug for each Tree, at the place where the branches had grown from the trunk; of these branches I had a part, bent crooked, laid about three-quarters of a foot deep into the earth, letting the tops of the branches, as much as it was possible, come out straight of the earth, and had them tied up. My only intention in this was to ensure that roots should grow out of the branches lying in the earth during the first or second year.

The branches that stuck above the earth grew only little during the first year, from which I concluded that the branches, in so far as they lay in the earth, had also made only few roots, and after this I resolved to let both trees stand until the second year. By then, the branches had budded out quite well. I then dug out a few of the branches, and I found that they were very well rooted, after which, in the beginning of the month of April 1688, I dug the roots of one of the Trees out of the earth. I placed them obliquely upright and cut off all the small roots, and I let the thick shoots of the roots remain on the root.

During this [1673] research on the stings, and also several years afterwards, I caught many bees in my garden and dissected them in order to discover, if possible, some eggs in their bodies,

To gain a better comprehension of this, I took a glass tube with a thickness somewhat greater than that of a swan's quill, in which I had put a little of the said dry substance from the leaden gutter and on which I had poured rain-water from my cistern, and I handed the draughtsman the glass tube, on which a magnifying glass was mounted, in order that he might draw such an animalcule as best he could.

From these discoveries we may understand indeed that in all falling rain-water which is conducted through gutters into cisterns animalcules are to be found

Now last summer three to four hundred silkworms, which were already two to three weeks old, were reared further in my house, the more so as we have two mulberry trees. ...

After having committed to paper my thoughts and investigations so far, I saw that in the house adjacent to mine, where silkworms had also been reared, already on the 28th of August young silkworms had emerged from the eggs, although the silkworms in my house had started spinning at an earlier moment and eggs had also emerged earlier from the moths.

I considered that this might be due to the fact that their house was warmer because it was a corner house and stood with its front facing Northeast, so that the sun shone on it in the morning and a large part of the afternoon. But what shall we say about this if we see that although around that time we carried eggs of the silkworms on our person by day for ten and more days, no young silkworms emerged from them43.