Page:Micrographia - or some physiological descriptions of minute bodies made by magnifying glasses with observations and inquiries thereupon.djvu/331

Rh 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.

Ince the Invention (and perfecting in some measure) of Telescopes, it has been observ'd by several, that the Sun and Moon neer the Horizon, are disfigur'd (losing that exactly-smooth terminating circular limb, which they are observ'd to have when situated neerer the Zenith) and are bounded with an edge every way (especially upon the right and left Rh