Page:Micrographia - or some physiological descriptions of minute bodies made by magnifying glasses with observations and inquiries thereupon.djvu/187

Rh information. But as farr as I have had opportunity to examine it, I have discovered with my Microscope very curious structures and contrivances; but designing much more accurate examinations and trials, both with my Microscope, and otherwise, as soon as the season will permit, I shall not till then add any thing of what I have already taken notice of; but as farr as I have yet observ'd, I judge the motion of it to proceed from causes very differing from those by which Gut-strings, or Lute-strings, the beard of a wilde Oat, or the beard of the Seeds of Geranium, Mosscatum, or Musk-grass Cranes-bill, move themselves. Of which I shall add more in the subsequent Observations on those bodies.

Have for several years together, in the Moneths of June, July, August, and September (when any of the green leaves of Roses begin to dry and grow yellow) observ'd many of them, especially the leaves of the old shrubs of Damask Roses, all bespecked with yellow stains; and the undersides just against them, to have little yellow hillocks of a gummous substance, and several of them to have small black spots in the midst of those yellow ones, which, to the naked eye, appear'd no bigger then the point of a Pin, or the smallest black spot or tittle of Ink one is able to make with a very sharp pointed Pen.

Examining these with a Microscope, I was able plainly to distinguish, up and down the surface, several small yellow knobs, of a kind of yellowish red gummy substance, out of which I perceiv'd there sprung multitudes of little cases or black bodies like Seed-cods, and those of them that were quite without the hillock of Gumm, disclos'd themselves to grow out of it with a small Straw-colour'd and transparent stem, the which seed and stem appear'd very like those of common Moss (which I elsewhere describe) but that they were abundantly less, many hundreds of them being not able to equalize one single seed Cod of Moss.

I have often doubted whether they were the seed Cods of some little Plant, or some kind of small Buds, or the Eggs of some very small Insect, they appear'd of a dark brownish red, some almost quite black, and of a Figure much resembling the seed-cod of Moss, but their stalks on which they grew were of a very fine transparent substance, almost like the stalk of mould, but that they seem'd somewhat more yellow.

That which makes me to suppose them to be Vegetables, is for that I perceiv'd many of those hillocks bare or destitute, as if those bodies lay yet conceal'd, as G. In others of them, they were just springing out of their gummy hillocks, which all seem'd to shoot directly outwards, as at A. In others, as at B, I found them just gotten out, with very little or no stalk, Rh Errata