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Of Insects

Essay 27, pages 150-177 of

The Christian Philosopher A Collection of the Best Discoveries in Nature With Religious Improvements By Cotton Mather, D.D., F.R.S.

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Another source for this is TheMather Project Cotton Mather, 'The Christian Philosopher (London, 1721) * Full Text PDF pages 141-166.

And yet another [http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009706116 The Online Books Page online books by Cotton Mather 		Mather, Cotton, 1663-1728: The Christian philosopher : a collection of the best discoveries in nature : with religious improvements / by Cotton Mather. (Charlestown : Published at the Middlesex Bookstore, J. M'Kown, printer, 1815) (page images at HathiTrust)] pages 150-177

A differing text has been printed as: together with considerable introductory material and scholarly notes.

ESSAY XXVII. Of Insects.

We are hastening into the animal world. Here we soon find a tribe vastly numerous, called by Pliny insecta, because of their having certain incisures and indenting about their bodies.

The French philosopher does well to rebuke us for calling these imperfect animals, for they want no parts, either necessary or convenient for them; they are complete in their kind, and the divine workmanship is astonishing! Even the poor ephemeron, whose whole period of life is but six or seven hours, who is bred and born, and lives, and goes through all his operations, and expires, and goes into his grave, all within this little period, must not be thrown into a class of imperfect animals; nor may it be said of it, that it is made in vain.

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Mr. Ray, in his Methodus Insectorum has distinguished the several kinds of insects. Of insects, there are some which do not change their form. Some of these are without feet ; these are either terrestrial, produced on the earth or in the earth, (whereto snails may be referred) or within the bowels of animals; or else aquatic, whereof some are greater, which have a peculiar way of moving, by first fixing their head on the ground, and then drawing up their tail towards it; some lesser, having a different way of crawling; and among these there are both round and flat ones,

But then there are some having feet. There are hexapod, or six footed ones; of these there are some terrestrial ones, both of a larger sort, and of a smaller: of the smaller, there are about five which molest the bodies of other living creatures; and as many that give not that molestation. There are other aquatic ones.

There are also octapoda, or eight footed ones; of these there are some that have a tail, as the scorpion; and some that have none as the spider; whereof one sort spins no web; three sorts are spinsters. To these add the ticks and the mites.

Yea, there are fourteen footed ones; particularly the three sorts of aselli. More than this there are twenty-four-footed ones, whose eight forefeet are lesser ones, and sixteen hinder feet be larger ones.

More than this, there is a sort of thirty-footed ones: but as being tired with specified number for the feet of these curious things, the rest we call polypoda, or many footed ones; of these there are some on the land, and others in the water.

Of insects, there are others who do undergo a

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change. Though Squammerdam, who has given the best account of these, observes, that there is no real transformation of these, but only an explication of the parts of the animal, which were before latent in miniature, and like the plant in the seed.

Of these there are some, in whose transmutation there is no rest or stop between the old and the new form, and who do not lose their motion at the time of their shifting the pellicula. And there are some, in whom the vermiculus leaving the former shape of the nympha, with which it appeared in the egg, and subsisted without food, now beginning to feed, hath its parts visibly increased and stretched out, and takes the form of a new nympha, which is not without motion, and from thence becomes a flier.

To the former species of transmutation there belong many sorts, thirteen at least; to the second a vast multitude more. And among the rest, the multitudinous armies of butterflies, which being divided into diurnal and nocturnal; of the former sort alone there is about fifty several kinds observed in England.

There is a third species of transmutation, which is a sensible change from a vermiculus to a flying insect, but yet with a sensible rest or stop between one form and the other. The flesh-flies belong to this, and some other kinds.

Before we go any further, we will make a pause upon an observation, thus expressed by Mr. Barker in his Natural Theology; for it is upon a matter which occurs in the view of all creatures, that now remain for our contemplation; yea, the vegetables too have themselves exemplified it.

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"Whence is it that these two natural principles of self-preservation and self-propagation, are so inviolably founded in the nature of all living creatures, even those that have no reason, as well as those that have; both which are necessary to the subsistence of the universe? May not we hence easily argue, that surely this was done intentionally for such an end? And if intentionally, then it is done by reason; and if by reason, it must be by his reason that first made the universe."

Dr. Gorden adds to the assurances which all the inquisitive before him have given us, that no insects are bred of corruption, but all of eggs. He also observes, that the females of all flies put their spawn in or near those places where the erucas, which are hatched out of them are to have their food. He observes likewise, that there is a kind of gluten, by which the females fasten their eggs to the bearing buds of trees, at such a rate, that the rain cannot wash them off. And he observes, these eggs will not be hurt by the greatest frost. that can happen.

Mr. Andry takes notice of a mistake in the ancients, who denied breath to the insects on the score of their wanting lungs; for insects have a greater number of lungs than other animals. The ancients also thought that the insects had no blood, because many of them had not a red liquor like ours; but this too was a mistake, it is not the colour, but the intent of the liquor that is to be considered in this case. It was likewise the belief of the ancients, that the insects had no hearts; whereas our microscopes now convince us of the contrary. And that the silk-worms particularly have a continued chain of hearts, from the head almost

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to the extremity of the tail. And it is the number of lungs and hearts that occasions those insects to give signs of life a long while after they are divided into several parts.

Mr. Poupart affirms, that the earth-worms and the round tailed worms, which are found in the intestines of animals, as also snails and leeches, are hermophrodites; but such worms as become flies are not so, rather they are of no sex, but are nests full of animals.

The spontaneous generation of insects has at last been so confuted by Redi, Malpighi, Squammerdam, Ray, and others, that no man of sense can any longer believe it. Indeed such a spontaneous generation would be nothing less than a creation. That all animals are generated of parent animals, is established from observation and experiment.

If an insect may be equivocally generated, then, why not sometimes a bird, yea, a man? Or why no new species of animals now and then? For there is as much art shewn in the formation of those, as of these. Dr. Cheyne assures us, nobody now-a-days, that understands any thing of nature, can imagine, that any animal, how abject soever, can be produced by an equivocal generation, or without the conjunction of male and female parents, in the same or in two different individuals. And there are very few who have considered the matter, but what own that every animal proceeds from a w:Preformation:pre-existent[[wikt:animalcule|animalcule, and that the parents conduce nothing but a convenient habitation to it, and suitable nourishments, till it be fit to be trusted with light, and capable of enjoying the benefits of air. There is nothing in

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the animal machine, but an inconceivable number of branching and winding canals, filled with liquors of difFerent natures, going a perpetual round, and no more capable of producing the wonderful fabric of another animal, than a thing is of making itself. There is besides in the generation of an animal, a necessity that the head, heart, nerves, veins and arteries, be formed at the same time, which never can be done by the motion of any fluid, which way soever moved.

Great God, thou art the father of all things; even the father of insects, as well as the father of spirits; and thy greatness appears with a singular brightness in the least of thy creatures!

Concerning frogs generated in the clouds, there has been a mighty noise; the thunder scarce makes a greater! But Mr. Ray says well, it seems no more likely than the Spanish gennets begotten by the wind, for that has good authors too. He adds, he that can swallow the raining of frogs, hath made a fair step towards believing that it may rain calves also; for we read that one fell out of the clouds in Avicen's time. Fromondus' opinion, that the frogs which appear in great multitudes after a shower, are not indeed generated in the clouds, but are coagulated of dust, commixed and fermented with rain water, is all over as impertinent. It is very certain that frogs are of two different sexes, and have their spermatic vessels; and their copulation is notorious, and after the spawn must be cast into the water, where the eggs lie in the midst of a copious gelly; then must appear a feetless tadpole, in which form it must continue a long while, till the limbs grow out, and it arrives to the perfect form of a frog.

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To what purpose all this, if your way, gentlemen, (Fromoudus, and the rest) may suffice?

Frogs appearing in such multitudes upon rains, do but come forth upon the invitation which the agreeable vapour of rain water gives to them. And for some such reason we are commonly entertained with such armies of them in the cool summer evenings, that we wonder where they have been lurking all the day. Monsieur Perrault, upon the dissection of the falling frogs, which the equivocal gentlemen so teaze us with, found their stomachs full of meat, and their intestines of excrement. the inquisitive Mr. Derham, on his meeting with frogs in a prodigious number, crossing a sandy way just after a shower, pursued the matter with his usual exactness, and he soon found the colony issue from an adjacent pond, who having passed through their tadpole state, and finding the earth moistened for their march, took the opportunity to leave their old latibula, where they had now devoured their proper food, and seek a more convenient habitation. Or what if we suppose them, at least in their spawn, carried up into the clouds by the sun, and kept there till grown into the state wherein they fall down from thence, as it has been affirmed they have on vessels at sea ?

As to the worms and other animals bred in the intestines of man and beast, "I think it may be proved, that the vast variety of worms found in almost all the parts of different animals, are taken into the respective bodies by meats and drinks." Even the maggots which grow in the back of the common caterpillar, are by their parents lodged there, as a proper apartment for them. Toads found in the midst of trees, and in stones,

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they have been sawn asunder do doubt grew of a toad spawn, which fell into that matter before the concretion thereof.

The vulgar opinion, that the heads or clothes of uncleanly people do breed ice, or that mites are bred in cheese, is a vulgar error: all such creatures are produced of eggs laid in such places by their parents; nature has endued them with a wonderous acuteness of scent and sagacity, whereby they can, though far distant, find out such places, and make towards them; and though they seem so slow, yet it has been found that in a little time they will march a considerable way to find out a convenient harbour. Here Mr. Ray makes a pause of religion; says he, "I cannot but look upon the strange instinct of this noisome and troublesome creature the louse, of seeking out foul and nasty clothes to harbour in, as an effect of divine Providence, designed to deter men and women from sordidness and sluttishness, and provoke them to cleanliness. God himself hates uncleanness, and turns away from it. Duet. xxiii, 12, 13, 14. But if God requires, and is pleased with bodily cleanliness, much more is He so with the pureness of the mind. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God!"

The eyes of insects have in them what is very Admirable. Their great necessity for accurate vision is, in the reticulated cornea of their eyes, admirably provided for; it is a most curious piece of lattice-work, in which every foramen is of a lenticular nature, and enables the creature to see every way without any time or trouble; probably every lens of the cornea has a distinct branch of the optic nerve ministering to it.

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Spiders are mostly octonocular some as Mr. Willoughby thought, senocular. Flies are multoculor, having as many eyes as there are perforations in their corneas. The greatest part of the head of that predacious insect, the dragon fly, is possessed by its eyes.

Though we say, as blind as a beetle, Mr. Leuwenhoeck has discovered at least three thousand eyes in the beetle.

Insects have their antennae, by which they not only cleanse their eyes, but also guard them; their eyes being fitted mostly to see objects at a distance, these feelers obviate the inconvenience of their too rashly running their heads against objects that may be very near to them.

And many of them arc, as Mr. Derham observes, surprisingly beautiful. The mechanism in those which creep is curious. What can exceed the oars of the amphibious insects, which swim and walk? Their hindmost legs are made most nicely, with commodious flat joints and bristles, on each side thereof towards the ends, serving for oars to swim; and nearer the body are two stiff spikes, to enable them to walk, as they have occasion.

An incomparable provision is made in the feet of such as wa]k or hang on smooth surfaces; divers of these, besides their acute and hooked nails, have also skinny palms on their feet, which enable them to stick on glass, and other smooth bodies, through the pressure of the atmosphere. The great strength and spring in the legs of such as leap, is very notable; and so are the well made feet and strong talons of such as dig. Admirable the faculty of some which

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fly, to convey themselves with speed and safety, by the help of their webs, or some other artifice that renders their bodies lighter than the air. How pleasantly do the spiders dart out of their webs, and sail away by the help thereof; whertof Dr. Lyster and Dr. Hulse were some of the first who made a discovery? There seems to be a hint of their darting in Aristotle, and in Pliny; but the ancients knew nothing of their sailing. Some other little animals may have their ways of conveyance as unknown to us, as heretofore has been that of the spiders; creatures found in new pits, and holes in the tops of houses, where they were never bred by any equivocal generation. The green scum on the surface of stagnant waters, which is nothing but prodigious numbers of animalcules; how came they there? And when gone, where do they go? What can be better contrived than the legs of insects, most incomparably fitted for the intended service? Or than their wings, distended and strenghtened with the finest bones, and these covered with the lightest membranes, whereof some are adorned with the most beautiful feathers; for the elegant colours of moths and butterflies are owing to neat feathers on their wings, that are set in rows with great exactness, and all the good order imaginable? And some are provided with articulations, for their wings to be withdrawn, and folded up in cases, and againreadily spread abroad upon occasion: scarabs and other that have elytra, are thus accommodated. That their bodies may be kept steady and upright, there is the admirable artifice of pointels and poises, under those which have no more than two wings, whereas the four winged ones have no such things : these poises in

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the bipenated insects are for the most part little balls, that are set at the top of a slender stalk, which they can move every way at pleasure to obviate vacillations. If one of the poises be cut off (or if the four-winged have lost one of their secondary or auxiliary wings) the insect will fly as if one side over balanced the other, till it fall to the ground.

How minute, but how astonishingly curious, must be the joints, the muscles, the tendons, and the nerves, necessary to perform the motions of these marvellous creatures! These things concur even in the smallest animalcules, and such as cannot be seen without our microscopes.

Among the celebrated pieces of human art, there was the cup that Oswald Nerlinger made of a pepper corn, that held twelve hundred little ivory cups, all gilt on the edges, and having each of them a foot, and yet afforded room for four hundred more. But Mr, Derham justly celebrates the more stupendous art, which plainly manifesteth the power and wisdom of the infinite Contriver of the inimitable fineries in the bodies of our little insects; they must have eyes, a brain, mouth, stomach, entrails, and other parts of an animal body, as well as legs and feet: and all these must have their necessary nerves and muscles; all these are covered with an agreeable tegument, whereof liow neat the imbrications and other fineries! All this curiosity many times lying in a body much smaller than the smallest grain of sand. A drop of water is a sort of an ocean to them! Mr. Derham in a drop of the green scum upon water, a drop not bigger than a pin's head, saw no less than an hundred frisking about. How vastly many

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more in a drop of pepper watt! How vastly many more in a drop of the Leuenhoeckian examination! Dr. Harris affirms, that not only in black pepper water, but also in water wherein barley and oats, but especially wheat, hath been steeped for about four or five days, he hath seen prodigious numbers of them. Great God, we are amazed!

The Jews have a foolish notion, though advanced by a Rabbi Solomon, upon the Egyptian plague of lice, that the devil has the dominion of no creature which is less than a barleycorn. Indeed a man who by humility shrinks himself into less than the light dust of the balance, may take the comfort of the notion. But then in philosophy, what a mighty army of animals less than a barleycorn are found under the dominion of the glorious God, who also has all the devils as much under his command as the least of these. I have read of a fly in a chain, Beelzebub is no more before the almighty Maker of the flies, and all other insects.

The sagacity observable in the generality of insects, for their provision against the necessities of the winter, is never enough to be admired.

Some having fed and bred themselves up to the perfection of their vermicular state in the summer months, then retire to a place of safety, and there throw off their nympha, and put on their aurelia state for all the winter, in which they have no occasion for any food at all; this is done by all the papilionaceous, as well as divers other tribes.

Others, in their most perfect state, are able to subsist in a kind of torpitude, without any food at all; being at no action, they are at no expense, but can lie and sleep whole months without any

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sustenance. It is remarkable that it is not any stress of weather which drives them into their intended retirement, but they go to it in the proper season, towards the end of summer. It is also remarkable, that every species betakes itself to a convenient receptacle, whereof there is a vast variety, where the frost cannot come to them.

There are others who need food in the winter, and it is astonishing to sec what a foresight their glorious Creator has given them to lay up accordingly.

One of these providers is the bee, reckoned by Aristotle among the civil people. Prepare now for a scene of wonders. Every colony of bees has a king. This majestical bee has a sting, which he can use without loosing it; but his majesty rarely finds occasion for it. The common bees which have their four wings and six legs are divided into bands, which have their officers, all working for the good of the whole, and as long as they live. But then there are drones, which are larger than they, and are servants and nurses under the honey bees, in hatching their brood. A bee, as Rusden observes, the first day of his flying abroad is an exquisite chymist, or at least a diligent surveyor and collector of the honey dews, provided by heaven for him on the leaves of the plants in the field, which he lays up in convenient cells, and there preserves it in a covering of wax, as foreseeing that a winter is coming. How indefatigable the pains of these industrious and marvellous creatures! If they have no king, they pine, they die, they yield themselves a prey to robbers; but they will not bear two. Butler observes, they abhor polyarchy, as well as anarchy. Their king

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oppresses none, is a benefactor to all; so their loyalty to him is inviolate. His place of abode makes a court, a noble retinue of bees attends him.

They have the orders of their king for all the work they do; and they never swarm without his orders. The chief cause of their swarm is the want of room. He usually goes himself with them, as in view of a more flourishing state, and leaves his decaying and unpleasant kingdom, with the noisome old combs, to such successors as he has left alive. If the old one dies in his going forth, they return home to the prince whom they had relinquished. And the king sometimes gives his consent to a second swarm, though there be no lack of room, out of his respect to some of his royal lineage. In their hives they are just to one another, though the fear of being robbed makes them kill any strangers that break in upon them. Colonies are sometimes engaged in wars; the king usually orders the battle, animating them with his voice, and like a general, for whose defence they unanimously expose themselves: They neither give nor take any quarter, and they distinguish one another by their smelling. Spurt any thing among them that may make them smell all alike, and their hostility ceaseth. The king is the only male among the bees. Each particular cell in the honey-comb is a matrix. The king walks from one cell to another, and injects a seed into each of; the honey bees mix with it a generative matter, which they have lodged there, and add water to it, and cover it with wax, which is not opened till the young bee opens its way out of it. The drones are also begotten by the king in like manner, but on a generative matter something

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different, and in deeper cells. The drones are for no purpose, but only to lie at home close to the combs, where the young bees are breeding, and hatch the young brood, as a capon does the eggs assigned to him. Hence the time for breeding the drones is deferred till near the fall of the honey dews, because they would have the use of them at as little charge of feeling as they can. But such is the nature of the drones, that if the bees do not kill them, as they generally do, when they can be no further serviceable, they do by the coldness of the season in September die of themselves.

But now how many moral instructions would the commonwealth of bees afford to a mind willing to be instructed of God, by the ministry of this mysterious insect! Honest Purchas has with an imitation of it gathered no less than three centuries of them; and yet these are but a few of the things which these preachers would advise us of: I will single out but this one peculiar document from them for myself, which Pliny takes notice of: nothing hinders their industry but bad weather.

Another of these providers is the ant, whereof the wise man says, they are exceeding wise; a people not strong, yet they prepare their meat in the summer.

Sir Edward King having been curious in examining their generation, wonders to find them lying in multitudes on their eggs, which they industrially gather together, by way of incubation. He wonders to see them in the morning bringing them up towards the top of the bank, and for the most part on the south side of it; but at night, especially if it be cool, or if likely to rain, you may

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dig a foot before you can find them. Indeed all is wonderful.

There is the field ant and the wood ant; the field ant feeds upon small seeds. They have their leaders and rulers, which they follow along their little paths in exact order, and return the same way; they all go out light, but all return home, heavy laden, with their burdens on their backs. The wood ant feeds upon leaves. You may see sometimes great paths made by them, three or four inches broad, and as beaten as the high ways; they march stoutly under such loads, that you cannot see their bodies;, a path looks perfectly green with them In two months of the year they take wing, and fly abroad in the warm sun, to take their pleasure, after the fatigue of their labour is over. And how unparalleled the tenderness, the diligence, the foresight, of these little animals for the safety of their young! It is very diverting to see how they carry about their young ones, and expose themselves to any dangers, rather than leave their young ones exposed; and how they remove them from one place to, another, as they find occasion.

Sometimes the ants in the Indies have nests most artificially placed between the limbs of huge trees, and these nests as big as a hogshead; here is their winter habitation.. They will ransack strangely for provisions, and in mighty troops, which all follow wherever the foremost goes. Mr. Derham well observes; "That it is evident, that the great wisdom discernible in this little animal, is owing to the infusions of the great Conservator of the world; because either, this wisdom  or forecast is an act of the animal itself, or of a


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being that hath wisdom: but the animal being irrational, it is impossible it can be its own act, but it must be derived or received from some wise being. And who I what can that be but the infinite Lord, and conservator of the world!"

An ant hill, is a seat of a very curious contrivance. Johnston makes it an article of his Thaumatography, and says very truly, the structure of no city is better. If you read the description of the quadrangular city, four feet long and a foot wide, the streets wisely laid out, the convenient granaries provided, the civility of the citizens to one another, as Aldrovandus has given it, you would see nothing in any Strabo more entertaining.

I wonder not that the wisdom of God sends me thither: Go to the ant thou sluggard; may I learn her ways and be wise. But we are passing into a theme, whereon there is no end of the wonders! The care of the insects about their offspring. Singular their providence for their young, in finding or making fit receptacles for their eggs or seed, where they may enjoy a suflicient incubation, and have ready an agreeable and sufficient food for their education.

They to whom fish is proper food, lay their sperm in flesh; from which nursery of maggots, S. Redi has for ever banished the old whimsey of anomalous generation, by incontestible experiments. Others, to whom the fruits or leaves of vegetables are a food, find a repository there. Some take this tree, some take that herb; and one family still always the same. If the cochineal were not accommodated with a fruit like a prickly pear, which opens (after the flower which protected it, is by the heat of the sun scorched away, when

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the small red insects are come to maturity, and would die and rot for want of more food, if the Indians did not now come to shake them out; gentlemen, where would you be supplied with your so much esteemed scarlet?

Others require a greater degree of warmth in their lodging, and those look out the bodies of larger animals, that they may be lodged there. Many, if not most sorts of birds, have their lice in their feathers; and several sorts of beasts have peculiar lice in their hairs, all distinct from the two sorts wherewith man is infested. It has been pretended that the ass is free, and an odd reason assigned for it; but it has been rather supposed from a passage in Aristotle, the chronology whereof will not well suit with the odd reason I refer to.

Some work themselves into the very scales of fishes. They find them in the very stomach of cod fish. The sheep complains of them in the nose; the kine have them on their backs; the horses in their intestines. Those in the heads of deer are often mentioned by ancient writers. Worms of many yards long are bred in the legs of men, and in other parts of their bodies; in their tongues, their gums, and their noses, as it is reported in our Philosophical Transactions; in their eyes, and their eyebrows, as in the German ephemerides. Mouftet and Tyson inform you what worms the stomach and bowels of men have often breeding in them. Lately in my neighbourhood a poor man reaching to vomit, a monstrous worm thrust up one end of itself, which the man seizing on, fell to pulling of it, as a fisherman pulls up his line, and pulled till the worm lay in an enormous heap; whence being drawn into its length and

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measured, the worm, in the full extent of it, made about one hundred and fifty feet long. Yea, Dr. Lyster affirms true caterpillars to have been vomited from thence. And Mr. Jessop affirms true hexapods to have been also thrown up with a vomit. Entertain unquestionable accounts from Germany, and you will see toads, frogs and lizards, cast up from a human stomach, no doubt from the drinking of their spawn. The livers and kidneys of animals have had their worms: yea, Verzascha has found them (without a metaphor) in the brains of men; probably they were laid in the laminae of the nostrils, and gnawed their way into the brains through the os cribriforme.

Wierus found them divers times in the gall bladder of persons whom he had opened. In di vers fevers the blood has been found strangely vermiculated, as Kircher and several others have upon examination reported; so one worm kills another! Verminous collections are found in the small pox, as Lange and fiorellus testify; and in pocky scabs there are incredible multitudes of them.

Others who make themselves nests by perforations in the earth, or in some wood, or in combs of their own building; it is admirable to see how they lay in, and seal up the provisions that will be necessary for their young ones there. So divers ichneumons carry in maggots, which they take from the leaves of trees, which they sagaciously put up close into their nests. Aristotle says they carry in spiders too.

Their nidification is astonishing. When their eggs are on the leaves of plants, or other materials on the land, how commodiously are they laid!

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always carefully glued on, with one certain end lowermost, and handsome juxtapositions. When in the water, in what beautiful rows! In a gelatine matter so fastened, as to prevent its dissipation. Single out but Pliny's instance of the gnat, a contemptible animal, the story of his proceedings! would give you a thousand astonishments! They who must perforate hard bodies, to make their lodgings there, have their legs, feet, mouth, yea, their whole bodies, very strangely accommodated to the service.

But for them who build or spin their nests, their art, as Mr. Derham expresses it, justly bids defiance to the most ingenious artist among men so much as tolerably to copy them. The geometrical combs of some, the terrestrial cells of others; the webs, nets and cases of divers. The very spider knows its lesson.

There is a natural glue afforded by the bodies of several to consolidate their work. The wasps have this, as well as the tinea vestivora, the cadewworm, and several others; what Goedar also observes of his eruca, this can be by some darted out at pleasure, and woven into silken balls. Mr. Boyle mentions an oval case of a silk-worm, which a person of his acquaintance drawing out all the silken wire that composed it, found it above three hundred yards, and yet weighed no more than two grains and an half. That wonderous insect, the silk-worm has no eyes, but how fine its performances. Let the Historia Singularis of them, written by Libavius, be perused, it will be found a collection of wonders. Good God, shall thy silk- worm adorn me, and shall he not instruct me too! There is another worm, which would at

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least learn this of him, to spin out of his own bowels, from his own experience and his own meditation, such things as may be useful to those to whom they shall be communicated. But, O vain person, proud of the silken attire that is rusling upon thee; is it possible that in a little worm thy pride should find a nourishment!

There are others of these little animals which make nature itself serviceable to their purpose, and make the vegetation of trees and herbs the means of building their little habitations. They build in the galls and balls of the oak, the willow, the brier, and other vegetables, and are furnished with a piercer, to prosecute their business. Among these we will single out what the ichneumon-fly does to the leaf of the nettle. The parent insect, with a stiff setacious tail, terebrates the rib of the leaf when tender, and makes way for its egg into the very pitch or heart thereof, and lays therewith some juice of its body, which will pervert the regular vegetation of it. From this wound arises a small excrescence, which, (when the egg is hatched into a maggot) grows bigger as the maggot increases, and swells on each side the leaf, between the two membranes, and extends itself into the parenchymous part thereof, till it has grown as big as two grains of wheat. In this mansion there lies a small, white, rough maggot, which turns to an aurelia, and afterwards to a very beautiful, green, small, ichneumon-fly.

A peculiar artifice, and so far out of the reach of any mortal understanding, that here must be, as Mr. Derham justly pauses upon it, the concurrence of some great and wise Being, that has from the beginning; taken care for the good of the ani-

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nal! The formation of these cases is quite beyond the cunning of the animal itself, but it is the act partly of the vegetable, and partly of some virulence in the juice or egg of the animal reposited in the vegetable.

It is a just thought of one well skilled in cosmology, that men themselves, and much more other creatures, may do many things which aptly serve to some certain end whereof they have no consideration. Creatures may be directed and constrained by a strong fancy which they have of various works, and various actions that belong to them. Well, but who has imprinted it? It is the great God who will have such works to be done. Great God, shall we contrive what service of thine thy nobler creature man may thereby be helped to! My excellent philosopher concludes: the divine reason runs like a golden vein through the whole leaden mine of brutal nature.

There is one thing more to be added : that the numbers of insects and vermin may not be too offensive to us, Providence has ordained many creatures, especially such as are in superior orders, to make it their business to destroy them, especially when their increase grows too numerous and enormous. As in the Indies, where they are sometimes exceedingly punished with ants, there is the ursus formicarius, whose very business is to devour them. Hideous armies of worms do sometimes visit my country, and carry whole fields of corn before them, and climbing up trees, leave them as bare as in the middle of winter. Our wild pigeons make this the season of their descent, and in prodigious flocks they fall upon these robbers, and clear the country of them.

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The destruction and death of animals does proclaim the fame of the divine wisdom in adjusting it.

The locusts, that have sometimes proved so devouring a plague, do also prove a dish to the people that suffer from them. In a Voyage round the World, I read, that in the East Indies, when these creatures come in great swarms to devour their fruits and herbs, the natives take them wilt nets, and parch them over the fire in an earthenpan, on which their wings and legs would fall off and their heads and backs turn red, but their bodies being full, would eat moist and sweet enough, and their head a little crackle in one's teeth; a dish that people might subsist upon: though the condition of the Acridophagi, mentioned by Diodorus, and by Strabo, would not encourage one to be confined to it.

Even the more noxious insects and vermin are such, that we may consider in them the finger of God. The sufferings they inflict upon us, may be considered as the scourges of God upon us for our miscarriages, and be improved as excitations to repentance. I have read somewhere t passage to this purpose: "I would carry on the matter to so much of watchfulness, in my apprehending opportunities for thoughts of repentance, that the provocations that may happen to be given to my bodily senses at any time, shall provoke such thoughts in my soul. If I happen to lodge where any insect or vermin assaults me, it shall humble me. I will think I have been one among the enemies of God in the world. These uneasy creatures are part of the armies which Lord of Hosts employs, and with some contempt, against his enemies.

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The worms which, especially in places where the salt and fresh water meets, do in such horrid swarms eat into the bottoms of ships, and render them even like honey-combs; the coasts that are not infested with them, ought to acknowledge the favor ofHeaven in it; and the merchant and mariner that suffers by them, ought to consider what rebuke of Heaven upon their dealings or doings may lie at the bottom of such a calamity.

How wretched would our condition be, if we were constantly infested with flies, like the poor winking people of New Holland! To be exempted from the mischiefs which the justice of God sometimes inflicts on people who do not acknowledge Him, is what calls for our acknowledgments of his goodness.

If the Lord of Hosts please to single out from his armies, whereof there is no number, no other legions than those of insects, how would they embitter, and even extinguish our lives. Locusts alone make whole nations tremble; worms have destroyed kings; and flies have scattered kingdoms. But then the reverse; O cantharides, how many millions of lives are continually saved by your epispastic applications! God is to be acknowledged in the good which is done by a green fly to the children of men.

Mr. Terry tells us, that among the Persees the East Indies they profess this devotion : the first creature of sense and of use which they behold in the morning, they employ still as a remembrancer to them all the day following, to draw up their thoughts in thanksgiving to the AlmightyGod, who hath made such a creature for our service. My God, shall the rise up and co- p 174

demn the Christian! If we should not from the view of thy creatures have our hearts drawn unto thy praises, we should to our confusion find it so!

"For what ends are all these little creatures made? Most certainly for great ends, and for such as are worthy of a God. The exquisite artifice which is conspicuous in the make of these creatures, does proclaim a marvellous and matchless wisdom in the Maker of them; and Wisdom will make nothing in vain. Though the more special uses of these creatures be as yet unknown to us, the only wise God sends to us this advice concerning them: What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shah know hereafter." [|Psalms|104:24}} |Isaiah|45:18}}|Jude|25}}|John|13:7|Genesis|1-31}}]

"However, this we know now; for these and all creatures this end is great enough, that the great with pleasure the various and curious works of his hands. Behold a, sufficient end, as well for a world as for a worm, that infinite God. may with delight behold his, His own glories in the works which his hands have wroug My readers, let us come to a consort in the doxology; O Lord, thou hast crested all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created! [|Revelation|4:11}}] The great God has contrived a mighty engine, of an extent that cannot be measured, and there is in it a contrivance of wondrous motions that cannot be numbered. He is infinitely gratified with the view of this engine in all its motions, infinly grateful to Him so glorious a spectacle! when it becomes grateful to us, then we come into some communion with him. I will esteem It a sufficient end for the whole creation of God, that the great Creator may have the gratification of beholding his own admirable workmanship. And I will esteem

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it a part of the homage I owe to his eternal Majesty, to be satUBed in such an end as this."

"I will transfer this meditation to the exercises which are to fill a life of piety. Have I not reason enough, motive enough, to abound in all the exercises of a pious life, even the most secret of them, and a guard upon the frames and thoughts of my heart within me? The great God is the beholder of my whole behaviour, he knows the way that I take; and I choose the things that please him in what I am now doing." [psalms 139:1, Job 23:10, Isaiah 56:4]

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finding myself now entered into the animal world, I take this opportunity to insert and pursue a observation of the acute Dr. Cheyne; which is, that the production of animals is a thing altogether inconsistent with the laws of mechanism: from which I infer, that it must be from something superior to them.

For first, the blood is by the force of the heart squeezed from the left ventricle, through the arteries, to the extremities of the body, and is thence returnedby the veins into the right ventricle thence by the w:Pulmonary artery:arteria pulmonalis into the lungs; from the lungs by the vena pulmonalis again into the right ventricle. The motion of the heart is caused by the nervous juices mixing with the blood, in the muscular part thereof; and these nervous juices are both derived from the blood, and forced into the muscular part of the heart, by by the motion of the heart itself, the texture of the containing vessels, and perhaps by the pulsation of the arteries upon the nerves of the brain. Here now, the heart is the cause of the motion of the blood in the arteries; and the motion of the blood in the arteries urging their juices through

which is a plain circulation of mechanical powers, a perpetual motion, a thing unknown to nature! An epicurean cannot contrive a water machine, wherein the water should move the machine, and the machine move the water, and the same water continually return in a circle to move the machine.

Great God, it is thy immediate influence on the powers of nature in me that keeps my heart in motion. Oh, that I may love thee and serve thee with all my heart! In thee I live! to glorify thee, should be the business of my life. [deuteronomy 10:12 acts 17:28]]

Again, in all animals how small, how fine the organs! how indefinite the number of them! Sensation is performed by the mediation of organs arising from the brain, and continued through the part affected. Now there is not the least imaginable solid part of the vessels or muscles but what we find sensible; wherefore the number of organs that convey sensation must be inconceivable! Nutrition is also performed by organs, through which a supply is conveyed to the place to be nourished. Now there is no part of the body but what may be increased or lessened; so then in every individual point of the body there is the termination of organs, through which a nourishment may be conveyed. Furthermore, the canals do all augment, and may all decay; and therefore every assignable part of these canals must be the termination of some secretory duct, separating a fluid fit for the repairing of their losses, and these again must have others to repair their losses; and how shall we conceive where to stop? Moreover, the most exquisite glasses can discover nothing in the several parts of the vessels and muscles, but canals amazingly slender; the better the glasses

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the more of these capillary pipes are discovered, in short all the solid parts of the body are nothing but either tubes to convey some fluid, or threads in bundles, tied by others that surround them, or going from one fibre to another, or spread into thin membranes; but each of these how inconceivably minute! the doctor does not scruple to aay, infinitely!

O infinitely Great God, I am astonished! I am astonished! For all these things hath my hand made, saith the Lord. [isaiah 66:2]