Page:Micrographia - or some physiological descriptions of minute bodies made by magnifying glasses with observations and inquiries thereupon.djvu/300

Rh had a very small thorax or middle part of his body, if compar'd to the length and number of his wings; which therefore, as he mov'd them very slowly, so must he move them very weakly. And this last propriety do we find somewhat observ'd also in bigger kind of Flying creatures, Birds; so that we see that the Wisdom and Providence of the All-wise Creator, is not less shewn in these small despicable creatures, Flies and Moths, which we have branded with a name of ignominy, calling them Vermine, then in those greater and more remakable animate bodies, Birds.

I cannot here stand to add any thing about the nature of flying, though, perhaps, on another occasion, I may say something on that subject, it being such as may deserve a much more accurate examination and scrutiny then it has hitherto met with; For to me there seems nothing wanting to make a man able to fly, but what may be easily enough supply'd from the Mechanicks hitherto known, save onely the want of strength, which the Muscles of a man seem utterly uncapable of, by reason of their smalness and texture, but how even strength also may be mechanically made, so contriv'd, that thereby a man shall be able to exert what strength he pleases, and to regulate it also to his own mind, I may elsewhere endeavour to manifest.

He Carter, Shepherd Spider, or long-legg'd Spider, has, for two particularities, very few similar creatures that I have met with; the first, which is discoverable onely by the Microscope, and is in the first and second Figures of the 31. Scheme, plainly describ'd, is the curious contrivance of his eyes, of which (differing from most other Spiders) he has onely two, and those plac'd upon the top of a small pillar or hillock, rising out of the middle of the top of its back, or rather the crown of its head, for they were fix'd on the very top of this pillar (which is about the heighth of one of the transverse Diameters of the eye, and look'd on in another posture, appear'd much of the shape, B C D.) The two eyes, B B, were placed back to back, with the transparent parts, or the pupils, looking towards either side, but somewhat more forward then backwards. C was the column or neck on which they stood, and D the crown of the head out of which that neck sprung.

These eyes, to appearance, seem'd to be of the very same structure with that of larger binocular creatures, seeming to have a very smooth and very protuberant Cornea, and in the midst of it to have a very black pupil, incompassed about with a kind of grey Iris, as appears by the Figure; whether it were able to move these eyes to and fro, I have not observ'd, but 'tis not very likely he should, the pillar or neck C, seeming to be cover'd and stiffen'd with a crusty shell; but Nature, in probability, has Rh Errata