Wrote Letter L-108 of 1680-06-14 to Thomas Gale about beer, yeast, crab's eyes in vinegar, and little animals reproducing in hermetically-sealed tubes

Date:

June 14, 1680

Standard reference information

L-number:

L-108

Leeuwenhoek's number:

Collected Letters number:

Collected Letters volume:

Text of the letter in the original Dutch and in English translation from Alle de Brieven / The Collected Letters at the DBNL - De Digitale Bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse Letteren.

The original manuscript on five quarto pages, written and signed by Leeuwenhoek, is preserved, along with three figures in red chalk and ink, at the Royal Society (MS. 1886. L 1. 57). An English translation of an extract is the be found at Early Letters L1.58.

Leeuwenhoek's summary

This letter did not have a summary. It was the first letter in the first publication by Gaesbeeck, Onsigtbare geschapene waarheden. It had an italicized paragraph at beginning that looked like his later summaries. However, this one had the customary opening paragraph full of honorifics. It was the typical opening paragraph that the editors of Philosophical Transactions always omitted when they published their "extracts" of Leeuwenhoek's letters.

Four years later in 1688, when Leeuwenhoek published Vervolg der Brieven, he preceded the letters with summaries of all of the previously published letters, including this one, in a section titled Register der Saaken in the voorgaende Brieven vervat (Register of topics contained in the foregoing letters). Later editions and the Latin translations included this summary.

From the summary below, it seems that Leeuwenhoek saw them as one volume under a common title: Ondervindingen en Beschouwingen.

32e. Missive, van den 14 Juny 1680. gedrukt by Daniel van Gaasbeek, in 't Boekje genaamt Ondervindingen en Beschouwingen, Waarin gehandelt werd: Van de makinge van de Gift, en van de menigvuldige lucht-belletjens, die voortgebracht werden, als Kreeften-oogen in azin leggen; en Dierkens in een toegestoote flesje.

32nd Letter, of June 14, 1680, printed by Danial van Gaasbeek, in the little book named Experiences and Contemplations, where was treated: of the making of poison, and of the multitude of air bubbles, that were brought forth, while crab's eyes lay in vinegar; and the little animals in a closed bottle.

Reception in London

This letter may well have been the one referred to in Birch's History (vol. IV, p. 43) at the meeting on June 17/27, two weeks after it was written:

A letter from Mr. Leeuwenhoeck was read.

Apparantly, no one was favorably impressed. This letter was the only one addressed to Royal Society members or officers between 1679 and 1686 that was not published in Philosophical Transactions.

Specimens and methods

"By the heat of the fire."

Leeuwenhoek developed world-class lens grinding skills early in his career. It took longer for him to learn to blow glass. In discussing the simple glass tube illustrated with this letter, Leeuwenhoek wrote:

Then by the heat of the fire the glass was fashioned to the figure of ABCDGHIKL, having at its pointed end G a small opening, because I considered that, the glass being hot, the air inside it would take the same cold temperature as that of the air outside it. After the lapse of about a quarter of an hour I sealed up the aperture at G by means of the fire. I also prepared a second glass, and dealt with it in like manner.

Response to other researchers

The investigation that Leeuwenhoek recorded in this letter was motivated by another researcher.

Having become acquainted with the various opinions concerning the reproduction of little animals, and more especially with what a certain gentleman has written, who maintains that no living being can originate in a firmly closed bottle, previously filled with meat-juice or meat, I had a mind to make some experiments upon this.

Alle de Brieven / Collected Letters notes that the "certain gentleman" is probably Francesco Redi. His Esperienze intorno alla generazione degli insetti from 1668 had been republished in Amsterdam in 1671 in Latin translation as Experimenta circa generationem insectorum.

After Leeuwenhoek used several glass tubes to carefully control the water, he found many little animals, so small they were barely discernible by his lenses. He could see from the figures in Redi's book that his microscope did not resolve the details that his own did. If the title plate (right) is any indication, Redi used a double-lens microscope that Leeuwenhoek knew would be inferior to his own single-lens magnifiers. He gave Redi the benefit of his doubts.

But I think that when that gentleman speaks of living little animals, he only means worms or maggots, such as we commonly see in rotten meat, and which ordinarily proceed from the eggs of flies and are so large that we have no need of a microscope to discern them.

Figures

The original drawings are preserved by the Royal Society. The Dutch and Latin editions that Leeuwenhoek published used the same three small plates placed in the text where they were discussed. The figures on the left sidebar came from the 1695 first edition of Arcana Naturae Detecta published by Kronevelt in Delft.

In the text, Leeuwenhoek said that he made all three of these drawings. He drew the two of the yeast cells in red chalk and the tube in ink.

For ocular demonstration of this combination, I took 6 globules of bees' wax and united them as in fig. 1, arranging and drawing them so as to show each of the six globules.

Next I took these six joined globules and rolled them in my hands so as to give them the form of fig. 2, judging that what my hands did in order to compress the globules of wax, the fermentation of the beer will do to compress the globules of yeast in a similar manner, after which globules of yeast will be perfect.

Scans of the original drawing from Alle de Brieven / Collected Letters (right sidebar; click to enlarge) have the lines of shading that Leeuwenhoek added to show the three-dimensionality of the globules and the tube. That was near the limits of his drawing skills. Perhaps he used ink when he drew the tube because he probably used a ruler to make the lines straight and parallel.

Alle de Brieven / Collected Letters (vol. III, p. 243) noted:

The editions have three drawings under fig. 1; in the manuscript only one has been found. In the printed editions fig. 3 is reproduced hatched and considerably diminished in size. Dobell reproduced the same figure, both from Leeuwenhoeck's original drawing and from the copperplate in van Gaesbeek's edition.

Publication history

Related sources, especially Philosophical Transactions, and first editions only of Leeuwenhoek's volumes of letters. For later editions see Related events under Learn more.

Year	Author	Title
1684	Leeuwenhoek, A. van	Onsigtbare geschapene waarheden
1695	Leeuwenhoek, A. van	Arcana Naturae Detecta
1931	Chapman, A. C.	The yeast cell: what did Leeuwenhoeck see?
1948	Leeuwenhoek, A. van	Alle de Brieven. The Collected Letters. Volume 3

Other publications:

This letter was not published in Philosophical Transactions. Nor was it published in any of the other journals that excerpted his letters, even after its publication in Latin in Arcana Naturae Detecta made it accessible to a wider audience.

Notes

In 1684, Gaesbeek paginated each letter separately and did not include the letter's number according to Leeuwenhoek's numbering scheme, which he might not have developed by then.

In the 1694 and 1713 editions, Leeuwenhoek paginated the volume continuously and added a letter number, beginning with Letter 28, and its date. This letter to Gale was the 32nd.

Learn more

Related letters:

What Leeuwenhoek wrote ...
Wrote Letter L-107 of 1680-06-14 to Robert Hooke, a short cover letter

Period 2 - 1679-1686

Structure of the letters in Period 2

1680: Member of the Royal Society

Spontaneous generation

Related people:

Thomas Gale

Related events:

Date	Event
June 20, 1680	Robert Hooke produced the two letters of 1680-06-14 from Leeuwenhoek at a meeting of the Royal Society
June 27, 1680	The Royal Society read Letter 108 of 1680-06-14 about beer, yeast, a little animals in hermetically sealed tubes
January 1, 1684	Daniel Gaesbeeck wrote Letter L-145 of 1684-01-01 to Leeuwenhoek about why he was publishing his letters
January 1, 1694	Published Onsigbare Geschapene Waarheden (Invisible Creation Truths), Letters 32, 39, 33

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Wrote Letter L-108 of 1680-06-14 to Thomas Gale about beer, yeast, crab's eyes in vinegar, and little animals reproducing in hermetically-sealed tubes

"By the heat of the fire."

Figures

Life in Holland

in the 1600's