Page:Cyclopaedia, Chambers - Supplement, Volume 1.djvu/166

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him to bring forth no lefs than 4000 eggs 1. M. Huygens cau«ht an Animalcule big with four young ones, and kept her tome hours till the was delivered '. Lewenhoeck gives the ■fkur-c of an embryo Animalcule coming out of the body ot an old one. At firft he imagined the former had only been acci- dentally faftened to the latter, but obferving it more narrowly, -found it to be a partus '. —£■ Hift. Acad, Serene. 17 18. p. ,,. ' Bib!. Anc. Mod. T. 11. p. 454- ' H ' ft ' Ac. a °- Scienc. i 7 i8.p.ia.Mem.deTrev.i7i 9 .p.i406- *» Erud. Lipf. ««. P- 37- ' N """- Re P- Lett - T - 3*' P- 614.- 'PhUTtariCN" 283: $.1307.]. Indeed, confidering the great variety of fpecies of yf«,»w/- rafe, it is not probable they Ihould all propagate in the lame manner. M. Harris obferved a fort ot green belts on Tome that were found in the fcum of puddle water ; and on fur- ther obfervation found thefe belts compoied ot globules, lo like the roes or fpawn of fifties, that he could not but fancy they feived for the fame ufe. After April he found many of them without anv thing of the green belt ; others with ■ it very much, and that unequally, diminifhed, and the water filled with a vaft number of fmall animals, which before he faw not there, and which he now looked on as the young animated fry, which the old ones had toed. Phil, I rani. N° 220. .p. 256.

With regard to their ftructurc and economy, Antmalcules are found of divers forts ; Tome formed like fifties, others reptile, others hexapedal ; fome horned, &t. In feveral kinds, however fmall, 'tis eafy to difcovcr the form ot their mouths, their probofcides, horns, l$c. the motions of their hearts, lungs, and other parts. Mem. de Trev. 1719. p.

Every Animalcule being an organized body, how delicate and fubtil mud the parts be, that are neceffary to conftitute it, and to preferve its vital adions ! It is hard to conceive, how in fo narrow a compafs, there ihould be contained a heart to be the fountain of life, mufcles neceffary to its motions, glands for the fecretion of its fluids, ftomach and bowels to digeft its food, and other innumerable members, without which an Animalcule cannot fubfift. But fince every one of thefe members is alfo an organical body, they muft have likcwife parts neceffary to their aaions. For they confift of fibres, membranes, coats, veins, arteries, nerves, and an almoft infinite number of fine tubes, like thofe whofe fmallnefs fcems to exceed all efforts of imagination. But there are fome parts that ought to be almoft infinitely lefs than thefe, as the fluids that flow along thefe fine tubes, the blood, lymph and ani- nal fpirits, whofe fubtilty, even in large animals, is in- credible.

The multitude of Animalcules obferved in the melt of a cod fifh are not all alive at once, but only fuch of them as are neareft the paffage, whereby they are to be difcharged, and which have moil moifture about them : The reft of them being more remote in the body, and incompaffed with a thicker matter, are not yet animated. In reality, the cod fifh is found a whole month in calling its fpawn, during all which time the feed is fucceffively ripening. The like holds of Animalcules in the fpawn of frogs. Phil. Tianf. N° 152. p. 347. feq. Microfcopical Animalcules, thofe only difcoverable by the help of a large magnifier. Thefe otherwife come under the denomination of inviftble Animalcules. The exceffive minutenefs of thefe Animalcules conceals them from the human eye unarmed. One of the wonders of the modern philofophy is, to have invented means for bringing creatures under our cognizance and inflection, which God and nature feem to have intended to keep hid ! An objeft a thoufand times too little to be able to affect our fenfe, Ihould feem to have been very fafe. Yet we have extended our views over animals, to whom thefe would be mountains. In reality, moft of our microfcopical Animalcules are of fo fmall a magnitude, that through a lens, whofe focal diitance is the tenth part of an inch, they only appear as fo many points s that is, their parts cannot be diftinguifhed, fo that they ap- pear from the vertex of that lens under an angle not exceed- ing a minute. If we inveftigate the magnitude of fuch an object, it will be found nearly equal to rr^E of an inch long. Suppofing therefore thefe Animalcules of a cubic figure, that is, of the fame length, breadth and thicknefs, their mag- nitude would be exprcfled by the cube of the fraction T that is, by the number of Tooo,o that is, fo many parts of an inch is each Animalcule equal to. Hence what fome philofophers have dreamed concerning angels is ftridtly true Of thefe Animalcules, that many thoufands of them may dance on the point of a fmall needle. There are in fome liquors Animalcules fo fmall, as upon cal- culation the whole magnitude of the earth is not found large enough to be a third proportional to thefe minute floating ani- mals, and the whales in the ocean. Keil, Introd. Phil. 1. 5. p. 56.

In fome of the Animalcules obferved by Lewenhoeck, he computed that three or four hundred of the fmalleft placed contiguous to each other in a line, would only equal the dia- meter of an ordinary grain of fand. Now multiply 300 cu- bically, produces 27,000,000, i. e. twenty feven millions of

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animals equal one grain of fand, fo that a cubical inch would contain 13,824,000,000,000, or almoft 14 millions of mil- lions. Bibl. Angl. T. 14. p. 128.

This contemplation of Animalcules has made the ideas of in- finitely fmall bodies extremely familiar to us. A mite was antiently thought the limit of littlenefs ; but we arc not now furprized to be told of animals twenty-feven millions of times (mailer than a mite. For fuch is the enormoufly little Eze of a kind of microfcopical Animalcule obferved by M. Malezieu, as he proves by a geometrical calculation of the augmenta- tion which his glafs makes ». Hartfoeker has carried the matter further. If the fyftem of generation be true, which fuppofes that all animals were formed from the beginning of the world, and inclofed one within another, and all of them in the firft animals of each fpecies, how minute muft the Animalcules now produced have been at the beginning ! It appears by calculation, that the fpawn of the firft fifh muft have been to that of the laft, as unity followed by thirty or forty thoufand cyphers, is to unity ''.— [ " Hift. Acad. Scienc. an. 1718. p. 11. b Bibl. Anc. Mod. T. 18. p. 198. feq.] V'ifMe Animalcules, thofe which may be difcerncd by the naked eye.

Such, e. gr. are mites, divers fpecies of infects, reptiles, and other vermin.

As thefe in all probability are fubfified on the fmallcr fry of microfcopical animals, they in their turn ferve for food to quadrupeds, £sfr. Ray mentions two forts of tamunduus which live wholly on ants ; whence they are called in Eng- lifh ant bears : The camelion lives on flies y the mole, on earth-worms; the badger, chiefly on beetles, worms, and other infects. 1 — By the way we may take notice, that becaufe fo many creatures live on ants and their eggs, providence hath fo ordered it that they fhonkl be the molt numerous of any tribe of infefls that we know. Ra}, Wifd. Great. P. 2. p. 372. feq.

Minute animals are found proportionably much ftronger, more active and vivacious than large ones. The fpring of a flea in its leap, how vaftly does it out-ltrip any thing greater animals are capable of > A mite, how vaftly fatter does it run than a race horfe ? M. de l'llle has given the computa- tion of the velocity of a little creature fcarce vifible by its fmallnefs, which he found to run three inches in half a fe- cond ; fuppofing now its feet to De the fifteenth part of a line, it muft make 500 fteps in the fpace of three inches ; that is, it mult (hift its legs 500 times in a fecond, or in the or- dinary pulfation of an artery. Hift. Acad. Scienc. 171 1.

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Invifible Animalcules — Naturalifts fuppofe another fpecies or order of invifible Animalcules, rife, fuch as efcapethe cog- nizance even of the belt microfcopes, and give niany pro- bable conjectures in relation to them. Reafon and analogy give fome fupport to the exiftence of infinite imperceptible Animalcules.

The naked eye, fay fome, takes in from the elephant to the mite i but there commences a new order referved only for the microfcope, which comprehends all thefe from the mite, to thofe twenty-feven millions of times fmaller; and this order cannot be yet faid to be exhaufted, if the microfcope be not arrived at its laft perfection : And when it is arrived there, (hall we then have attained the whole fyftem' of ani- mals ? 'Tis nowife probable that the limits of nature (hould coincide exactly with the limits of our eye-fight, when af- fifted by the microfcope. * Who knows, fays another, but the fmalleft and mod imperceptible animals thcmfelves have others lefs bred and nourifhed by them, and which bear the fame proportion to them, that thofe bear to the animals they are produced on \ — [ ■ Hift. Acad. Scienc. 17 18. p. 11. feq. b Nouv. Rep. Let. T. 43. p. 364]

Lewenhoeck, though he had often examined the femen of mice, yet by reafon, as he judges, of its fluidity and clear- nefs, he could never difcover any Animalcules in it. But he makes no difficulty to conclude, that this too abounds with living creatures, fince he has found them in animals of all bigneffes and fpecies, from a horfe, to a fmall horfe-fly ; for that nature observes the fame method in the fmalleft as the greateft bodies. Hook, Phil. Col. N° 3. p. 56.

Animalcules, in medicine, b"t.-We have large fyftcms of phyfic, of pathology, of daemonology, witchcraft, &c. founded on the animalcular principles. M. Langc will have Animalcules to be the immediate origins or inftruments which the devil makes ufe of to effect temptations, feduffions, il- lufions, charms ; in fine, to work on our imagination, and infpire what thoughts and inclinations he pleafes, and the like. The prince of the air, it fcems, can act on the bo- dies of thofe Animalcules at pleafure, which being of aerial origin belong to the number of his immediate fubjecls. He playa on their organs, they on ours, according to the part of the body in which they are lodged, as the brain, the heart, the genitals, (tc

Others attribute the itch, others the fmall-pox and meafles, others the epilepfy, t&c. to Animalcules. Langius goes fur- ther, and pretends to reduce all difeafes in general to the fame principle. A late writer at Paris, who affumed the title of an Englifh phyfician, has done more. He not only

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