The least of _Reptiles_ I have hitherto met with, is a Mite, a Creature
whereof there are some so very small, that the sharpest sight, unassisted
with Glasses, is not able to discern them, though, being white of
themselves, they move on a black and smooth surface; and the Eggs, out of
which these Creatures seem to be hatch’d, are yet smaller, those being
usually not above a four or five hundredth part of a well grown Mite, and
those well grown Mites not much above one hundredth of an inch in
thickness; so that according to this reckoning there may be no less then a
million of well grown Mites contain’d in a cubick inch, and five hundred
times as many Eggs.
Notwithstanding which minuteness a good _Microscope_ discovers those small
movable specks to be very prettily shap’d Insects, each of them furnished
with eight well shap’d and proportion’d legs, which are each of them
joynted or bendable in eight several places, or joynts, each of which is
covered, for the most part, with a very transparent shell, and the lower
end of the shell of each joynt is fringed with several small hairs; the
contrivance of the joynts seems the very same with that of Crabs and
Lobsters legs, and like those also, they are each of them terminated with a
very sharp claw or point; four of these legs are so placed, that they seem
to draw forwards, the other four are placed in a quite contrary position,
thereby to keep the body backwards when there is occasion.
[15]The body, as in other larger Insects, consists of three regions or
parts; the hinder or belly A, seems covered with one intire shell, the
middle, or chest, seems divided into two shells BC. which running one
within the other, the Mite is able to shrink in and thrust out as it finds
occasion, as it can also the snout D. The whole body is pretty transparent,
so that being look’d on against the light, divers motions within its body
may be perceived; as also all the parts are much more plainly delineable,
then in other postures, to the light. The shell, especially that which
covers the back, is curiously polisht, so that ’tis easie to see, as in a
_convex_ Looking-glass, or _foliated_ Glass-ball, the picture of all the
objects round about; up and down, in several parts of its body, it has
several small long white hairs growing out of its shell, which are often
longer then the whole body, and are represented too short in the first and
second Figures; they seem all pretty straight and pliable, save only two
upon the forepart of its body, which seem to be the horns, as may be seen
in the Figures; the first whereof is a prospect of a smaller sort of Mites
(which are usually more plump) as it was _passant_ to and fro; the second
is the prospect of one fixt on its tail (by means of a little mouth-glew
rub’d on the object plate) exhibiting the manner of the growing of the
legs, together with their several joynts.
This Creature is very much diversify’d in shape, colour, and divers other
properties, according to the nature of the substance out of which it seems
to be ingendred and nourished, being in one substance more long, in another
more round, in some more hairy, in others more smooth, in this nimble, in
that slow, here pale and whiter, there browner, blacker, more transparent,
&c. I have observed it to be resident almost on all kinds of substances
that are mouldy, or putrifying, and have seen it very nimbly meshing
through the thickets of mould, and sometimes to lye _dormant_ underneath
them; and ’tis not unlikely, but that it may feed on that vegetating
substance, _spontaneous Vegetables_ seeming a food proper enough for
_spontaneous Animals_,
But whether indeed this Creature, or any other, be such or not, I cannot
positively, from any Experiment, or Observation, I have yet made,
determine. But, as I formerly hinted, it seems probable, that some kind of
wandring Mite may sow, as ’twere, the first seeds, or lay the first eggs,
in those places, which Nature has instructed them to know convenient for
the hatching and nourishing their young; and though perhaps the prime
Parent might be of a shape very differing from what the offspring, after a
little while, by reason of the substance they feed on, or the Region (as
’twere) they inhabite; yet perhaps even one of these alter’d progeny,
wandering again from its native soil, and lighting on by chance the same
place from whence its prime Parent came, and there settling, and planting,
may produce a generation of Mites of the same shapes and properties with
the first wandring Mite: And from some such accidents as these, I am very
apt to think, the most sorts of Animals, generally accounted _spontaneous_,
have their _origination_, and all those various sorts of Mites, that are to
be met with up and down in divers putrifying substances, may perhaps be all
of the same kind, and have sprung from one and the same sort of Mites at
the first.
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