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
Of these small Eels, which are to be found in divers sorts of Vinegar, I
have little to add besides their Picture, which you may find drawn in the
third Figure of the 25. _Scheme_: That is, they were shaped much like an
Eel, save only that their nose A, (which was a little more opacous then the
rest of their body) was a little sharper, and longer, in proportion to
their body, and the wrigling motion of their body seem’d to be onely
upwards and downwards, whereas that of Eels is onely side-wayes: They
seem’d to have a more opacous part about B, which might, perhaps, be their
Gills; it seeming always the same proportionate distant from their nose,
from which, to the tip of their tail, C, their body seem’d to taper.
Taking several of these out of their Pond of Vinegar, by the net of a small
piece of filtring Paper, and laying them on a black smooth Glass plate, I
found that they could wriggle and winde their body, as much almost as a
Snake, which made me doubt, whether they were a kind of Eal or Leech.
I shall add no other observations made on this minute Animal, being
prevented herein by many excellent ones already publish’d by the ingenious,
Doctor _Power_, among his _Microscopical_ Observations, save onely that a
quantity of Vinegar repleat with them being included in a small Viol, and
stop’d very close from the ambient air, all the included Worms in a very
short time died, as if they had been stifled.
And that their motion seems (contrary to what we may observe in the motion
of all other Infects) exceeding slow. But the reason of it seems plain, for
being to move to and fro after that manner which they do, by waving onely,
or wrigling their body; the tenacity, or glutinousness, and the density or
resistance of the fluid _medium_ becomes so exceeding sensible to their
extremely minute bodies, that it is to me indeed a greater wonder that they
move them so fast as they do, then that they move them no faster. For what
a vastly greater proportion have they of their superficies to their bulk,
then Eels or other larger Fishes, and next, the tenacity and density of the
liquor being much the same to be moved, both by the one and the other, the
resistance or impediment thence arising to the motions made through it,
must be almost infinitely greater to the small one then to the great. This
we find experimentally verify’d in the Air, which though a _medium_ a
thousand times more rarify’d then the water, the resistance of it to
motions made through it, is yet so sensible to very minute bodies, that a
Down-feather (the least of whose parts seem yet bigger then these Eels, and
many of them almost incomparably bigger, such as the quill and stalk) is
suspended by it, and carried to and fro as if it had no weight.
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