There is, almost all the Spring and Summer time, a certain small, round,
white Cobweb, as ’twere, about the bigness of a Pea, which sticks very
close and fast to the stocks of Vines nayl’d against a warm wall: being
attentively viewed, they seem cover’d, upon the upper side of them, with a
small husk, not unlike the scale, or shell of a Wood-louse, or Hog-louse, a
small Insect usually found about rotten wood, which upon touching presently
rouls it self into the form of a peppercorn: Separating several of these
from the stock, I found them, with my _Microscope_, to consist of a shell,
which now seemed more likely to be the husk of one of these Insects: And
the fur seem’d a kind of cobweb, consisting of abundance of small
filaments, or sleaves of cobwebs. In the midst of this, if they were not
hatch’d, and run away before, the time of which hatching was usually about
the latter end of _June_, or beginning of _July_, I have often found
abundance of small brown Eggs, such as A and B in the second Figure of the
36. _Scheme_, much about the bigness of Mites Eggs; and at other times,
multitudes of small Insects, shaped exactly like that in the third Figure
marked with X. Its head large, almost half the bigness of its body, which
is usual in the _fœtus_ of most Creatures. It had two small black eyes
_aa_, and two small long joynted and brisled horns _bb_. The hinder part of
its body seem’d to consist of nine scales, and the last ended in a forked
tayl, much like that of a _Cutio_, or Wood-louse, out of which grew two
long hairs; they ran to and fro very swiftly, and were much of the bigness
of a common Mite, but some of them less: The longest of them seem’d not the
hundredth part of an inch, and the Eggs usually not above half as much.
They seemed to have six legs, which were not visible in this I have here
delineated, by reason they were drawn under its body.
If these Minute creatures were _Wood-lice_ (as indeed from their own shape
and from the frame, the skin, or shell, that grows on them, one may with
great probability ghess) it affords us an Instance, whereof perhaps there
are not many like in Nature, and that is, of the prodigious increase of
these Creatures, after they are hatch’d and run about; for a common
Wood-louse, of about half an inch long, is no less then a hundred and
twenty five thousand times bigger then one of these, which though indeed it
seems very strange, yet I have observed the young ones of some Spiders have
almost kept the same proportion to their Dam.
This, methinks, if it be so, does in the next place hint a Quæry, which may
perhaps deserve a little further examination: And that is, Whether there be
not many of those minute Creatures, such as Mites, and the like, which,
though they are commonly thought of otherwise, are only the _pully_, or
young ones, of much bigger Insects, and not the generating, or parent
_Insect_, that has layd those Eggs; for having many times observ’d those
Eggs, which usually are found in great abundance where Mites are found, it
seems something strange, that so small an Animal should have an Egg so big
in proportion to its body. Though on the other side, I must confess, that
having kept divers of those Mites inclosed in a box for a good while, I did
not find them very much augmented beyond their usual bigness.
What the husk and cobweb of this little white substance should be, I cannot
imagine, unless it be, that the old one, when impregnated with Eggs, should
there stay, and fix it self on the Vine, and dye, and all the body by
degrees should rot, save only the husk, and the Eggs in the body: And the
heat, or fire, as it were, of the approaching Sun-beams should vivifie
those Relicts of the corrupted Parent, and out of the ashes, as ’twere, (as
it is fabled of the _Phœnix_) should raise a new _offspring_ for the
perpetuation of the _Species_. Nor will the cobweb, as it were, in which
these Eggs are inclos’d, make much against this Conjecture; for we may, by
those cobwebs that are carried up and down the Air after a Fog (which with
my _Microscope_ I have discovered to be made up of an infinite company of
small filaments or threads) learn, that such a texture of body may be
otherwise made then by the spinning of a Worm.
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