Notwithstanding which minuteness a good _Microscope_ discovers those small movable specks to be very prettily shap’d Insects, each of them furnished with eight well shap’d and proportion’d legs, which are each of them joynted or bendable in eight several places, or joynts, each of which is covered, for the most part, with a very transparent shell, and the lower end of the shell of each joynt is fringed with several small hairs; the contrivance of the joynts seems the very same with that of Crabs and Lobsters legs, and like those also, they are each of them terminated with a very sharp claw or point; four of these legs are so placed, that they seem to draw forwards, the other four are placed in a quite contrary position, thereby to keep the body backwards when there is occasion. [15]The body, as in other larger Insects, consists of three regions or parts; the hinder or belly A, seems covered with one intire shell, the middle, or chest, seems divided into two shells BC. which running one within the other, the Mite is able to shrink in and thrust out as it finds occasion, as it can also the snout D. The whole body is pretty transparent, so that being look’d on against the light, divers motions within its body may be perceived; as also all the parts are much more plainly delineable, then in other postures, to the light. The shell, especially that which covers the back, is curiously polisht, so that ’tis easie to see, as in a _convex_ Looking-glass, or _foliated_ Glass-ball, the picture of all the objects round about; up and down, in several parts of its body, it has several small long white hairs growing out of its shell, which are often longer then the whole body, and are represented too short in the first and second Figures; they seem all pretty straight and pliable, save only two upon the forepart of its body, which seem to be the horns, as may be seen in the Figures; the first whereof is a prospect of a smaller sort of Mites (which are usually more plump) as it was _passant_ to and fro; the second is the prospect of one fixt on its tail (by means of a little mouth-glew rub’d on the object plate) exhibiting the manner of the growing of the legs, together with their several joynts. This Creature is very much diversify’d in shape, colour, and divers other properties, according to the nature of the substance out of which it seems to be ingendred and nourished, being in one substance more long, in another more round, in some more hairy, in others more smooth, in this nimble, in that slow, here pale and whiter, there browner, blacker, more transparent, &c. I have observed it to be resident almost on all kinds of substances that are mouldy, or putrifying, and have seen it very nimbly meshing through the thickets of mould, and sometimes to lye _dormant_ underneath them; and ’tis not unlikely, but that it may feed on that vegetating substance, _spontaneous Vegetables_ seeming a food proper enough for _spontaneous Animals_,