Volume 1
Alle de brieven van Antoni van Leeuwenhoek / uitgegeven, geïllustreerd en van aanteekeningen voorzien door een Commissie van Nederlandsche geleerden.
- Antonie van Leeuwenhoek
- Date:
- 1939-
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Alle de brieven van Antoni van Leeuwenhoek / uitgegeven, geïllustreerd en van aanteekeningen voorzien door een Commissie van Nederlandsche geleerden. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![colour; and in this watery liquor there do appear some blackish sandy particles, having a confused motion, which grow in bigness, and being grown so great as sand is to our Eye, the said particles joyn themselves close and firm together, as it were, in one mass, and then shoot down to the anus, carrying with them, in case the Lowse have much blood in her body, a little aqueous blood. These excreted particles appear like the excrement of a Silk-worm. I cannot forbear to give you my thoughts concerning the Com¬ pression of the Air. I take a narrow glass-pipe, as here (in Fig. 1.) AB, hermetically sealed above in A; which pipe I fill about half full of water, as EB: Into it I insert the forcer DC, which is a wire, wound about at D with a piece of leather fitted into the glass-pipe, but first thrust into hot Candle-grease, that so neither Water nor gross Air may pass through it. The water which is in EB, is by the Forcer DC forced up, whereby the Air, that is between A and E, is compressed into a hundred times less room than it hath before this pressure. And, forasmuch as tis certain to me, that no Body can be brought into less Dimensions than it is, except some other body be at the same time dislodged out of it, nor any Body made bigger, but some other bodies must come into it; the Air therefore cannot be compress’d together, and be made a hundred times less, but the Air must permeat the Glass; as ’tis also the common opinion, that the first and subtilest stuff of the Air passes through all close Bodies. I conceive then, that the first and finest matter of Air consists of something like grains of Sand, taking it from the finest sort to the grossest'3); its second matter, of something like Bodies between the grossest Sand-corns and [red currants]'1); its third matter, of something like Bodies between [red currants and pebbles or]25) Cherries; and that all these parts are soft and Compressibility of the air and the diffusion through glass. Ug. ni. 23) The division of matter into three categories, according to its fineness, can be traced back to Descartes. However, L’s division does not coincide with the French philosopher’s. Cf. Descartes, Principia Philosophiae III; pp. 48-52. Oeuvres VIII; ed. Ch. Adam et P. Tannery. Paris, 1905. [D.] The measure of the particles of the various categories, given by L., must not be taken literally, but as a broad comparison. [H.] 24) The “Strawberries’’ of the text of the Phil. Trans, is a faulty translation. [Sw.] 25) Phil. Trans.: “Strawberries and’’. [Sw.]](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b31364962_0001_0063.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
