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
This is a Creature so officious, that ’twill be known to every one at one
time or other, so busie, and so impudent, that it will be intruding it self
in every ones company, and so proud and aspiring withall, that it fears not
to trample on the best, and affects nothing so much as a Crown; feeds and
lives very high, and that makes it so saucy, as to pull any one by the ears
that comes in its way, and will never be quiet till it has drawn blood: it
is troubled at nothing so much as at a man that scratches his head, as
knowing that man is plotting and contriving some mischief against it, and
that makes it oftentime sculk into some meaner and lower place, and run
behind a mans back, though it go very much against the hair; which ill
conditions of it having made it better known then trusted, would exempt me
from making any further description of it, did not my faithful _Mercury_,
my _Microscope_, bring me other information of it. For this has discovered
to me, by means of a very bright light cast on it, that it is a Creature of
a very odd shape; it has a head shap’d like that exprest in 35. _Scheme_
marked with A, which seems almost Conical, but is a little flatted on the
upper and under sides, at the biggest part of which, on either side behind
the head (as it were, being the place where other Creatures ears stand) are
placed its two black shining goggle eyes BB, looking backwards, and fenced
round with several small _cilia_, or hairs that incompass it, so that it
seems this Creature has no very good foresight: It does not seem to have
any eye-lids, and therefore perhaps its eyes were so placed, that it might
the better cleanse them with its fore-legs; and perhaps this may be the
reason, why they so much avoid and run from the light behind them, for
being made to live in the shady and dark recesses of the hair, and thence
probably their eye having a great aperture, the open and clear light,
especially that of the Sun, must needs very much offend them; to secure
these eyes from receiving any injury from the hairs through which it
passes, it has two horns that grow before it, in the place where one would
have thought the eyes should be; each of these CC hath four joynts, which
are fringed, as ’twere, with small brisles, from which to the tip of its
snout D, the head seems very round and tapering, ending in a very sharp
nose D, which seems to have a small hole, and to be the passage through
which he sucks the blood. Now whereas if it be plac’d on its back, with its
belly upwards, as it is in the 35. _Scheme_, it seems in several Positions
to have a resemblance of chaps, or jaws, as is represented in the Figure by
EE, yet in other postures those dark strokes disappear; and having kept
several of them in a box for two or three dayes, so that for all that time
they had nothing to feed on, I found, upon letting one creep on my hand,
that it immediately fell to sucking, and did neither seem to thrust its
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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