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
Distances of Objects also, ’tis very likely they distinguish, partly by the
consonant impressions made in some two convenient Pearls, one in each
cluster; for, according as those congruous impressions affect, two Pearls
neerer approach’d to each other, the neerer is the Object, and the farther
they are distant, the more distant is the Object: partly also by the
alteration of each Pearl, requisite to make the Sensation or Picture
perfect; for ’tis impossible that the Pictures of two Objects, variously
distant, can be perfectly painted, or made on the same _Retina_ or bottom
of the eye not altered, as will be very evident to any one that shall
attentively consider the nature of refraction. Now, whether this alteration
may be in the Figure of the _Cornea_, in the motion of access or recess of
the _Retina_ towards the _Cornea_, or in the alteration of a crystalline
humour, if such there be, I pretend not to determine; though I think we
need not doubt, but that there may be as much curiosity of contrivance and
structure in every one of these Pearls, as in the eye of a Whale or
Elephant, and the almighty’s _Fiat_ could as easily cause the existence of
the one as the other; and as one day and a thousand years are the same with
him, so may one eye and ten thousand.
This we may be sure of, that the filaments or sensative parts of the
_Retina_ must be most exceedingly curious and minute, since the whole
Picture it self is such; what must needs the component parts be of that
_Retina_, which distinguishes the part of an object’s Picture that must be
many millions of millions less then that in a man’s eye? And how exceeding
curious and subtile must the component parts of the _medium_ that conveys
light be, when we find the instrument made for its reception or refraction
to be so exceedingly small? we may, I think, from this speculation be
sufficiently discouraged from hoping to discover by any optick or other
instrument the determinate bulk of the parts of the _medium_ that conveys
the pulse of light, since we find that there is not less accurateness shewn
in the Figure and polish of those exceedingly minute lenticular surfaces,
then in those more large and conspicuous surfaces of our own eyes. And yet
can I not doubt, but that there is a determinate bulk of those parts, since
I find them unable to enter between the parts of Mercury, which being in
motion, must necessarily have pores, as I shall elsewhere shew, and here
pass by, as being a digression.
As concerning the horns FF, the feelers or smellers, GG, the _Proboscis_
HH, and I, the hairs and brisles, KK, I shall indeavour to describe in the
42. _Observation_.
* * * * *
Observ. XL. _Of the Teeth of a _Snail_._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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