Micrographia: Some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies Made by Magnifying Glasses with Observations and Inquiries ThereuponHooke, Robert
History
Micrographia: Some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies Made by Magnifying Glasses with Observations and Inquiries Thereupon
Hooke, Robert
Magnifying glasses -- Early works to 1800; Microscopy -- Early works to 1800; Natural history -- Pre-Linnean works
But, to return to our Observation. I told several lines of these pores, and
found that there were usually about threescore of these small Cells placed
end-ways in the eighteenth part of an Inch in length, whence I concluded
there must be neer eleven hundred of them, or somewhat more then a thousand
in the length of an Inch, and therefore in a square Inch above a Million,
or 1166400. and in a Cubick Inch, above twelve hundred Millions, or
1259712000. a thing almost incredible, did not our _Microscope_ assure us
of it by ocular demonstration; nay, did it not discover to us the pores of
a body, which were they _diaphragm’d_, like those of Cork, would afford us
in one Cubick Inch, more then ten times as many little Cells, as is evident
in several charr’d Vegetables; so prodigiously curious are the works of
Nature, that even these conspicuous pores of bodies, which seem to be the
channels or pipes through which the _Succus nutritius_, or natural juices
of Vegetables are convey’d, and seem to correspond to the veins, arteries
and other Vessels in sensible creatures, that these pores I say, which seem
to be the Vessels of nutrition to the vastest body in the World, are yet so
exceeding small, that the _Atoms_ which _Epicurus_ fancy’d would go neer to
prove too bigg to enter them, much more to constitute a fluid body in them.
And how infinitely smaller then must be the Vessels of a Mite, or the pores
of one of those little Vegetables I have discovered to grow on the
back side of a Rose-leaf, and shall anon more fully describe, whose bulk is
many millions of times less then the bulk of the small shrub it grows on;
and even that shrub, many millions of times less in bulk then several trees
(that have heretofore grown in _England_, and are this day flourishing in
other hotter Climates, as we are very credibly inform’d) if at least the
pores of this small Vegetable should keep any such proportion to the body
of it, as we have found these pores of other Vegetables to do to their
bulk. But of these pores I have said more elsewhere.
To proceed then, Cork seems to be by the transverse constitution of the
pores, a kind of _Fungus_ or Mushrome, for the pores lie like so many Rays
tending from the center, or pith of the tree, outwards; so that if you cut
off a piece from a board of Cork transversly, to the flat of it, you will,
as it were, split the pores, and they will appear just as they are
express’d in the Figure B of the XI. _Scheme_. But if you shave off a very
thin piece from this board, parallel to the plain of it, you will cut all
the pores transversly, and they will appear almost as they are express’d in
the Figure A, save onely the solid _Interstitia_ will not appear so thick
as they are there represented.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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