 Section 30 of Micrographia. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Morgan Scorpion. Check out my YouTube channel by entering Morgan Scorpion into the YouTube search box. Micrographia by Robert Hook. Section 30. Observation 25 of the stinging points and juice of nettles and some other venomous plants. A nettle is a plant so well known to everyone as to what the appearance of it is to the naked eye that it needs no description. And there are very few that have not felt as well as seen it. And therefore it will be no news to tell that a gentle and slight touch of the skin by a nettle does often time not only create very sensible and acute pain much like that of a burn or scald, but often also very angry and hard swellings and inflammation of the parts, such as will presently rise and continue swollen diverse hours. These observations I say are common enough, but how the pain is so suddenly created and by what means continued, augmented for a time and afterwards diminished and at length quite extinguished has not that I know been explained by any. And here we must have recourse to our microscope and that will, if almost any part of the plant be looked on, show us the whole surface of it very thick and set with turnpikes or sharp needles of the shape of those represented in the 15 scheme and first figure by AB, which are visible also to the naked eye, each of which consists of two parts very distinct for shape and differing also in quality from one another. For the part A is shaped very much like a round bodkin, from B tapering till it end in a very sharp point. It is of substance very hard and stiff, exceedingly transparent and clear, and as I by many trials certainly found, is hollow from top to bottom. This I found by this experiment. I had a very convenient microscope with a single glass, which drew about half an inch. This I had fastened into a little frame, almost like a pair of spectacles, which I placed before my eyes. And so holding the leaf of a nettle at a convenient distance from my eye, I did first, with the thrusting of several of these bristles into my skin, perceive that presently after I had thrust them in, I felt the burning pain begin. Next I observed in diverse of them that upon thrusting my finger against their tops, the bodkin, if I may so call it, did not in the least bend. But I could perceive moving up and down within it a certain liquor, which upon thrusting the bodkin against its basis, or bag B, I could perceive to rise towards the top. And upon taking away my hand, I could see it again subside and shrink into the bag. This I did very often, and saw this phenomenon as playing as I could ever see a parcel of water ascend and descend in a pipe of glass. But the basis underneath these bodkins, on which they were fast, were made of a more pliable substance, and looked almost like a little bag of green leather, or rather resembled the shape and surface of a wild cucumber, or cucumberis assinini, and I could plainly perceive them to be certain little bags, ladders, or receptacles full of water, or as I guess the liquor of the plant, which was poisonous. And those small bodkins were by the syringe pipes, or glister pipes, which first made way into the skin, and then served to convey that poisonous juice upon the pressing of those little bags into the interior and sensible parts of the skin, which being so discharged, does corrode or, as it were, burn that part of the skin it touches, and this pain will sometimes last very long, according as the impression is made deeper or stronger. The other parts of the leaf or surface of the nettle have a very little considerable, about what is common to most of these kinds of plants, as the ruggedness or indenting, and hairiness, and other roughnesses of the surface or outside of the plant, of which I may say more in another place. As I shall likewise of certain little, pretty clear balls, or apples, which I have observed to stick to the sides of these leaves, both on the upper and underside, very much like the small apples which I have often observed to grow on the leaves of an oak, called oak apples, which are nothing but the matrices of an insect, as I elsewhere show. The chief thing, therefore, is, how this plant comes, by so slight a touch, to create the greater pain, and the reason of this seems to be nothing else, but the corrosive, innate liquor contained in the small bags or bladders, upon which grow out those sharp syringe pipes, as I before noted, and very consonant to this, is the reason of the pain created by the sting of a bee, wasp, etc., as I elsewhere show. For by the dart, which is likewise a pipe, is made a deep passage into the skin, and then by the anger of the fly is his golly poisonous liquor injected, which being admitted among the sensible parts, and so mixed with the humours or stagnating juices of that part, does create an abolition perhaps, or effervescence, as is usually observed in the mingling of two different chemical saline liquors, by which means the part becomes swelled, hard, and very painful. For thereby the nervous and sensible parts are not only stretched and strained beyond their natural tone, but are also pricked, perhaps, or corroded by the pungent and incongruous parts of the intruded liquor. And this seems to be the reason why aqua, fortice, and other saline liquors, if they come to touch the sensitive part, as in a cut of the skin or the like, do so violently and intolerably excruciate and torment the patient. And it is not unlikely that the inventors of that diabolical practice of poisoning the points of powers and poignards might receive their first hint from some such instance in natural contrivances. As this of the nettle, for the ground why such poison and weapons kill so infallibly as they do, seems no other than this of our nettle stinging, for the poignard or dirt makes the partage or entrance into the sensitive or vital parts of the body, whereby the contagious substance comes to be dissolved by and mixed with the fluid parts or humours of the body. And by that means spread itself by degrees into the whole liquid part of the body, in the same manner as a few grains of salt put into a great quantity of water will by degrees defuse itself over the whole. And this I take to be the reason of killing of toads, frogs, efs, and several fishes by stirring salt on their backs, which experiment was shown to the royal society by a very ingenious gentleman and a worthy member of it, for those creatures having always a continual excitation, as it were, of slimy and watery parts, threatening out of the pores of their skin, the saline particles by that means obtain a vehicle, which conveys them into the internal and vital parts of the body. This seems also to be the reason why bathing in mineral waters are such sovereign remedies for multitudes of distempers, especially conical, for the liquid and warm vehicles of the mineral particles, which are known to be in very considerable quantities in those healing baths, by the bodies long stay in them, who by degrees steep and insinuate themselves into the pores and parts of the skin, and thereby those mineral particles have their ways and passages opened to penetrate into the inner parts, and mingle themselves with the stagnant juices of the several parts, besides, many of those offensive parts which were united with those stagnant juices, and were contrary to the natural constitution of the parts, and so become irksome and painful to the body, but could not be discharged, because nature had made no provision for such accidental mischiefs are, by means of this soaking and filling the pores of the skin with a liquor, afforded a passage through that liquor that fills the pores into the ambient fluid, and thereby the body comes to be discharged. So that, it is very evident, there may be a good as well as an evil application of this principle, and the ingenious invention of that excellent person, Dr. Wren, of injecting liquors into the veins of an animal seems to be reducible to this head. I cannot say, nor is this a fit place, to mention the several experiments made of this kind by the incomparable Mr. Boyle, the multitudes made by the lately mentioned physician, Dr. Park, the history whereof, as he has been pleased to communicate to the Royal Society, though he may perhaps be prevailed with to make public himself. But I shall rather hint, that certainly, if this principle were well considered, there might, besides the further improving of bathing and syringing into the veins, be thought on several ways, whereby several obstinate distempers of a humane body, such as the gout, dropsy, stone, etc., might be mastered and expelled, and good men might make as good a use of it as evil men have made a perverse and diabolical. And that the filling of the pores of the skin with some fluid vehicle, is of no small efficacy towards the preparing a passage for several kinds of penetrant juices, and other dissolvable bodies, who insinuate themselves within the skin and into the sensitive parts of the body, may be, I think, proved by an instance given us by Bolognus in the 26th chapter of the second book of his observations, which, containing a very remarkable story, I have here transcribed. Eas verufus dulatim secabemus et filio tradiciebemus ut facilius exicari prosant. Toccai in eo negotio occupatos nos videntes similita eas radicaes tractare ed secare voluerant. Atcum sumus esot estus et omne sudorei maderent. Crecunquei aem radicum manibus trattavorant sudoremquei abstercerant. Ot faciam digitis scarpceserant, tantam furriginem eas locis cos atigerent postea censerant, ut adori vidarentor. Camilionis enem negri radics eo vertute polit, ut cuti applicata epsam adeo inflamet. Ut ned squili, neg utekai ulai cantesima parte ita adorant. At prorigo non adeo caleritor sesae prodit, postunum aut altrim poro horam, singoli varis faciae locis cutem adeo inflamatum haberei copemus ut tota sanguneia vidoretor. Atcui cromagis aem confricabumus, tantomagis exitabutor prorigo. Fronti assidebamos subplatano, atcui initio proludicro habebumus et redebumus, at tandam ili plurimum indignati sunt. Et naisi ase verasemus. Nun crom expertus tali vertute aem plantum polere, haud dubie male nos multasent. Atmen nostra excusatio fuet ab ilis facilitus accepta, cum eodum incomodo nos affectus conspicurant. Mirum sanai cod in tantilo radike, tam ingentem efficiam nostromalo experti sumus. By which observation of his, it seems manifest that there being all covered with sweat, who gathered and cut this root of the black chameleon thistle, this was the reason why they suffered that inconvenience. For it seems the like circumstance had not been before that noted, nor do I find any mention of such a property belonging to this vegetable in any of the herbals I have at present by me. I could give very many observations which I have made of this kind, whereby I have found that the best way to get a body to be insinuated into the substance or insensible pores of another is first to find a fluid vehicle that has some congruity, both to the body to be insinuated and to the body into whose pores you would have the other conveyed. And in this principle lies the great mystery of staining several sorts of bodies, as marble, woods, bones, etc., and of dyeing silks, clothes, walls, feathers, etc. But these being digressions I shall proceed to... End of Section 30 By Robert Hooke Section 31 Observation XXVI Of cowage in the itching operation of some bodies There is a certain down of a plant brought from the East Indies called commonly, though very improperly, cow itch, the reason of which mistake is manifest enough for the description of it which Mr. Parkinson sets down in his herbal, Tribe XI, Chapter II Faziolus seliqua hirsuda, the hairy kidney bean called in serrate where it grows, cow itch. We have had, says he, another of this kind brought us out of the East Indies which being planted was in show like the former, but came not to perfection, the unkindly season not suffering it to show the flower. But of the cods that were brought some were smaller, shorter and rounder than the garden kind. Others much longer and many growing together as it were in clusters and covered all over with a brown short hairiness. So fine that if any of it be rubbed or fall on the back of one's hand or other tender parts of the skin it will cause a kind of itching, but not strong nor long enduring, but passing quickly away without either danger or harm. The beans were smaller than ordinary and of a black shining color. Having one of these cods given me by a sea captain who had frequented those parts, I found it to be a small cod about three inches long much like a short cod of French beans, which had six beans in it. The whole surface of it was covered over with a very thick and shining brown down, or hair, which was very fine and for its bigness stiff. Taking some of this down and rubbing it on the back of my hand I found very little or no trouble. Only I was sensible that several of these little downy parts were rubbing did penetrate and were sunk or stuck pretty deep into my skin. After I had thus rubbed it for a pretty while I felt very little or no pain in so much that I doubted whether it were the true cowage. But whilst I was considering I found the down began to make my hand itch, and in some places to smart again much like the stinging of a flea or nat, and this continued a pretty while so that by degrees I found my skin to be swelled with little red pustules, and to look as if it had been itchy. But suffering it without rubbing or scratching the itching, tickling pain quickly grew languid, and within an hour I felt nothing at all, and the little protuberances were vanished, the cause of which odd phenomenon I supposed to be much the same with that of the stinging of a nettle, for by the microscope I discovered this down to consist of a multitude of small and slender conical bodies, much resembling needles or bodkins such as are represented by A.B., C.D., E.F., of the first figure of the sixteenth scheme, that their ends, A.A.A., were very sharp, and the substance of them stiff and hard much like the substance of several kinds of thorns and crooks growing on trees, and though they appeared very clear and transparent yet I could not perceive whether they were hollow or not, but to me they appeared like solid transparent bodies without any cavity in them. Whether though they may not be a kind of cane filled with some transparent liquor which was hardened because the cod which I had was very dry, I was not able to examine. Now being such stiff, sharp bodies it is easy to conceive how with rubbing they might easily be thrust into the tendrous parts of the skin, and thereby reason of their exceeding fineness and dryness not create any considerable trouble or pain till by remaining in those places moistened with the humours of the body some caustic parts sticking on them or residing within them might be dissolved and mixed with the ambient juices of that place, and thereby those fibers and tender parts adjoining become affected and as it were corroded by it, whence while that action lasts the pains created are pretty sharp and pungent, though small, which is the essential property of an itching one. That the pain also caused by the stinging of a flea, a net, a fly, a wasp, and the like precedes much from the very same cause I elsewhere in their proper places endeavour to manifest. The stinging also of shred horse-hair, which in merriment is often strode between the sheets of a bed, seems to precede from the same cause. Section 32 of Micrographia. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Shelly Turner. Micrographia by Robert Hook. Section 32. Of the beard of a wild oat, and the use that may be made of it for exhibiting always to the eye the temperature of the air as to dryness and moisture. This beard of a wild oat is a body of a very curious structure, though to the naked eye it appears very slight and inconsiderable, it being only a small black or brown beard or bristle, which grows out of the side of the inner husk that covers the grain of a wild oat. The whole length of it, when put in water so that it may extend itself to its full length, is not above an inch and a half, and for the most part somewhat shorter, but when the grain is ripe and very dry, which is usually in the months of July and August, this beard is bent somewhat below the middle, namely about two fifths from the bottom of it, almost to a right angle. And the under part of it is wreathed like a width. The substance of it is very brittle when dry, and it will very easily be broken from the husk on which it grows. If you take one of these grains and wet the beard in water, you will presently see the small bended top to turn and move round, as if it were sensible, and by degrees, if it be continued when enough, the joint or knee will straighten itself, and it be suffered to dry again, it will, by degrees, move round another way, and at length, bend again into its former posture. If it be viewed with an ordinary single microscope, it will appear like a small wreath's sprig with two clefs, and if wet as before, and then looked on with this microscope, it will appear to unreath itself, and by degrees to straighten its knee and the two clefs will become straight, and almost on opposite sides of the small cylindrical body. If it be continued to be looked on a little longer with a microscope, it will within a little while begin to wreath itself again, and soon after return to its former posture, bending itself again near the middle into a kind of knee or angle. Several of those bodies I examined with larger microscopes, and there found them much of the make of those two long wreath cylinders delineated in the second figure of the 15 scheme, which two cylinders represent the wreath part broken into two pieces, where of the end, A B, is supposed to have joined to the end, C D, so that E A C F does represent the whole wreath part of the beard, and E G, a small piece of the upper part of the beard, which is beyond the knee, which as I had not room to insert, so was it not very considerable, either for its form or any known property. But the under or wreath part is notable for both. As to its form, it appeared, if it were looked on sideways, almost like a willow or a small tapering rod of hazel. The lower or bigger half, of which only, is twisted round several times, in some three, in others more, in others less, according to the bigness and maturity of the grain on which it grew, and according to the dryness and moisture of the ambient air, as I shall show more at large by and by. The whole outward superfaces of this cylindrical body is curiously adorned or fluted with little channels, and interjacent ridges or little protuberances between them, which run the whole length of the beard, and are straight so the beard is not twisted and wreathed where it is. Just after the same manner, each of those sides is beset pretty thick with small brides or thorns, somewhat in form resembling that of porcupine quills, such as A-A-A-A-A, in the figure, all whose points are directed like so many turnpikes towards the small end or top of the beard, which is the reason why, if you endeavor to draw the beard between your fingers the contrary way, you will find it to stick and great, as it were, against the skin. The proportion of these small conical bodies, A-A-A-A-A, to that whereon they grow, the figure will sufficiently show as also their manner of growing, their thickness, and nearness to each other, as that towards the root or bottom of the beard, they are more thin and much shorter, in so much that there is usually left between the top of the one and the bottom of that next above it more than the length of one of them, and that towards the top of the beard they grow more thick and close, though there be fewer ridges, so that the root and almost half the upper are hid by the tops of those next below them. I could not perceive any transverse pores unless the whole wreathed part were separated and cleft in those little channels by the wreathing into so many little strings as there were ridges which was very difficult to determine, but there were in the wreath part two very conspicuous channels or clefts which were continued from the bottom F to the elbow E-H or all along the part which was wreathed which seemed to divide the wreath cylinder into two parts, a bigger and a less. The bigger was that which was at the convex side of the knee, namely on the side A, and was wreathed by O-O-O-O-O this as it seemed the broader, so did it also longer. The other P-P-P-P-P which was usually pursed or wrinkled in the bending of the knee as about E seemed both the shorter and the newer so that at first I thought the wreathing and un-wreathing of the beard might have been caused by the shrinking or swelling of that part, but upon further examination I sound that the clefts K-K-L-L were stuffed up with a kind of spongy substance which for the most part was very conspicuous near the knee as in the cleft K-K when the beard was dry upon the discovery of which I began to think that it was upon the swelling of this porous pith upon the access of moisture or water that the beard being made longer in the midst was straightened and by the shrinking or subsiding of the parts of that spongy substance together when the water or moisture was exhaled or dried the pith or middle parts growing shorter the hole became twisted. But this I cannot be positive in for upon cutting the wreath part in many places transversely I was not so well satisfied with the shape and the manner of the pores of the pith. For looking on these transverse sections with a very good microscope I found that the ends of those transverse sections appeared much of the manner of the third figure of the 15 scheme A, B, C, F, E and the middle of the pith C, C seemed very full of pores indeed but all of them seemed to run the long ways. This figure plainly enough shows in what manner those clefts K and L divided the wreath cylinder into two unequal parts and also of what kind of substance the whole body consists for by cutting the same beard in many places with transverse sections I found much the same appearance with this expressed so that those pores seemed to run as in most other such caney bodies the whole length of it the clefts of this body K, K and L L seemed as is also expressed in the figure to wind very oddly in the inner part of the wreath and in some parts of them they seemed stuffed as it were with that spongy substance which I just now described. This so oddly constituted vegetable substance is first that I have met with taken notice of by Patista Porta in his natural magic as a thing known to children and jugglers and it has been called by some of those last named persons the better to cover their cheat the leg of an Arabian spider or the leg of an enchanted Egyptian fly and has been used by them to make a small index cross or the like to move round upon the wedding of it with a drop of water and muttering certain words but the use that has been made of it for the discovery of the various constitutions of the air as to dryness and moistness is incomparably beyond any other for this it does to admiration the manner of contriving it so as to perform this great effect is only thus provide a good large box of ivory about four inches over and of what depth you shall judge convenient according to your intention of making use of one two three or more of these small beards ordered in the manner which I shall by and by describe let all the sides of this box be turned of basket work which here in London is easily enough procured full of holes in the manner almost of a lettuce the bigger or more the holes are the better that so the air may have the more free passage to the enclosed beard and may the more easily pass through the instrument it will be better yet though not altogether so handsome if instead of the basket work on the sides of the box the bottom and the top of the box be joined together only with three or four small pillars after the manner represented in the four figure of the 15 scheme or if you intend to make use of many of these small beards joined together you may have a small long case of ivory whose sides are turned of basket work full of holes which may be screwed on to the underside of a broad plate of ivory on the other side of which is to be made the divided ring or circle to which divisions the pointing of the hand or index which is moved by the conjoined beard may show all the minute variations of the air there may be multitudes of other ways for contriving this small instrument so as to produce this effect which any one may according to his peculiar use and the exigency of his present occasion easily enough contrive and take on which I shall not therefore insist. The whole manner of making any one of them is thus having your box or frame A A B B fitly adapted for the free passage of the air through it in the midst of the bottom B B B you must have a very small hole C into which the lower end of the beard is to be fixed the upper end of which beard A B is to pass through a small hole of a plate or top A A if you make use only of a single one and on the top of it E is to be fixed a small and very light index FG made of a very thin sliver of a reed or cane but if you make use of two or more beards they must be fixed and bound together either with a very fine piece of silk or with a very small touch of hard wax or glue which is better and the index FG is to be fixed on the top of the second, third or fourth in the same manner as on the single one now because that in every of these contrivances the index FG will with some temperatures of air move two, three or more times round which without some other contrivance than this will be difficult to distinguish therefore I thought of this expedient the index or hand FG being raised a pretty way above the surface of the plate A A fix in at a little distance from the middle of it a small pin H so as almost to touch the surface of the plate A A and then in any convenient place of the surface of the plate fix a small pin on which put on a small piece of paper or thin paste board, vellum or parchment made of a convenient size and shaped in the manner of that FG expressed by IK so that having a convenient number of teeth every turn or return of the pin H may move the small indented circle a tooth forward or backwards by which means the teeth of the circle being marked it will be thereby very easy to know certainly how much variation any change of weather will make upon the small wreathe body in the making of this secondary circle of vellum or the like so that the air is to be had that it be made exceeding light and to move very easily for otherwise a small variation will spoil the whole operation the box may be made of brass, silver, iron or any other substance if care be taken to make it open enough to let the air have a sufficiently free access to the beard the index also may be various ways contrived so as to show both the number of revolutions it makes and the minute divisions of each revolution I have made several trials and instruments for discovering the dryness and moisture of the air with this little wreathe body and find it to very exceedingly sensibly with the least change in the constitution of the air as to dryness and moisture so that with one breathing upon it I have made it untwist a whole bout and the index or hand is pointed to various divisions on the upper face or ring of the instrument according as it was carried nearer and nearer to the fire or as the heat of the sun increased upon it other trials I have made with gut strings to find them nothing near so sensible though they also may be so contrived as to exhibit the changes of the air as to dryness and moisture both by their stretching and shrinking in length and also by their breathing and breathing themselves but these are nothing near so exact or so tender for their varying property will in a little time change very much but there are several other vegetable substances that are much more sensible than even this beard of a wild out such I have found the beard of the seed of muskress or geranium muscatum and those of other kinds of cranes bill seeds and the like but always the smaller the breathing substance be the more sensible is it of the mutations of the air a conjecture at the reason of which I shall by and by add the lower end of this wreath cylinder being stuck upright in a little soft racks so that the bended part or index of it lay horizontal I have observed it always with moisture to unread itself from the east for instance by the south to the west and so by the north to the east again the sun as we commonly say and with the heat and drought to retwist and the wreath itself the contrary way namely from the east for instance by the north to the west and so onwards the cause of all which phenomena seems to be the differing texture of the parts of these bodies each of them especially the beard of a wild oat and of muskress seed seeming to have two kind of substances one that is very porous loose and spongy into which the watery steams of the air may be very easily forced which will be thereby swelled and extended in its dimensions just as we may observe all kind of vegetable substance upon steeping in water to swell and grow bigger and longer and a second that is more hard and close into which the water can very little or not at all penetrate this therefore retaining always near the same dimensions and the other stretching and shrinking according as there is more or less moisture or water in its pores by reason of the make and shape of the parts the whole body must necessarily unreath and wreath itself and upon this principle it is very easy to make several sorts of contrivances that should thus wreath and unreath themselves either by heat and cold or by dryness and moisture or by any greater or less force from whatever cause it proceed whether from gravity or weight or from wind which is motion of the air or from some springing body or the like this had I time I should enlarge much more upon for it seems to me to be the very first footstep of sensation and animate motion the most plain, simple and obvious contrivance that nature has made use of to produce a motion next to that of rare refaction and condensation by heat and cold and were this principle very well examined I am very apt to think it would afford us a very great help to find out the mechanism of the muscles which indeed as far as I have here there too been able to examine seems to me not so very perplex as one might imagine especially upon the examination which I made of the muscles of crabs, lobsters and several sorts of large shellfish and comparing my observations on them with the circumstances I observed in the muscles of terrestrial animals now as in this instance of the beard of a wild oat we see there is nothing else requisite to make it wreath and unreath itself and to straighten and bend its knee then only a little breath of moist or dry air or a small atom almost of water or liquor and a little heat to make it again evaporate form by holding the beard placed and fixed as I before directed near a fire and dipping the tip of a small shred of paper in well rectified spirit of wine and then touching the wreath's cylindrical part you may perceive it to untwist itself and presently again upon the avillation of the spirit by the great heat it will retwist itself and thus will it move forward backwards as often as you repeat the touching it with the spirit of wine so may perhaps the shrinking and relaxing of the muscles be by the influx and evaporation of some kind of liquor or juice but of this inquiry I shall add more elsewhere End of Section 32 Section 33 of micrographia this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Micrographia by Robert Hook Section 33 Observation 28 of the Seeds of Venus Looking Glass or Corn Violet From the leaves and downs and beards of plants we come at last to the seeds and here indeed seems to be the cabinet of nature wherein are laid up its jewels and the nature about vegetables is in no part manifested more than in the various contrivances about the seed nor indeed is there in any part of the vegetable so curious carvings and beautiful adornments as about the seed this in the larger sorts of seeds is most evident to the eye nor is it less manifest through the microscope in those seeds whose shape and structure by reason of their smallness hardly able to distinguish of these there are multitudes many of which I have observed through a microscope and find that they do for the most part every one afford exceedingly pleasant and beautiful objects for besides those that have various kinds of carved surfaces there are other that have smooth and perfectly polished surfaces others a downy hairy surface some are covered only with a skin with a kind of shell others with both as is observable also in greater seeds of these seeds I have only described four sorts which may serve as a specimen of what the inquisitive observers are likely to find among the rest the first of these seeds which are described in the scheme 17 are those of corn violets the seed is very small black and shining and to the naked eye looks almost ugly but through the microscope it appears a large body covered with a tough thick and bright reflecting skin very irregularly shrunk and pitted and so much that it is almost an impossibility to find two of them wrinkled alike so great a variety may there be even in this little seed this though it appeared one of the most promising seeds for beauty to the naked eye yet through the microscope it appeared but a rude misshapen seed therefore drew that I might thereby manifest how unable we are by the naked eye to judge of beautyous or less curious microscopical objects cutting some of them in sundar I observed them to be filled with a greenish yellow pulp and to have a very thick husk in proportion to the pulp end of section 33 section 34 of micrographia this is a LibriVox recording a LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Dion Giants Salt Lake City, Utah micrographia by Robert Hook observation 29 of the seeds of time these pretty fruits here represented in the 18 scheme are nothing else but 9 several seeds of time they are all of them in differing posture both as to the eye and the light nor are they all of them exactly of the same shape there being a great variety both in the bulk and figure of each seed but they all agreed in this that being looked on with a microscope they each of them exactly resembled a lemon or orange dried and this both are of the same color some of them are a little rounder of the shape of an orange as A and B they have each of them a very conspicuous part by which they were joined to their little stock and one of them had a little piece of stock remaining on the opposite side of the seed you may perceive very plainly by the figure is very prominent as is very usual in lemons which prominencies are expressed in D, E and F they seemed each of them a little creased or wrinkled but E was very conspicuously furrowed as if the inward make of this seed had been somewhat like that of a lemon also but upon dividing several seeds with a very sharp pen knife and examining them afterward I found their mate to be in nothing but bulk differing from that of peas that is to have a pretty thick coat and all the rest an indifferent white pulp which seemed very close so that it seems nature does not very much alter her method in the manner of enclosing and preserving the vital principle in the seed in these very small grains from that of beans, peas et cetera the grain affords a very pretty object for the microscope namely a dish of lemons placed in a very little room should a lemon or nut be proportionably magnified to what this seed of time is it would make it appear as big as a large hay rig and it would be no great wonder to see Homer's Iliads and Homer and all crammed into such a nutshell we may perceive even in these small grains as well as in greater how curious and careful nature is in preserving the seminal principle of vegetable bodies in what delicate strong and most convenient cabinets she lays them and closes them in a pulp for their safer protection from outward dangers and for the supply of convenient elemental juice when the heat of the sun begins to animate and move these little automatons or engines as if she would from the ornaments where with she has decked these cabinets hint to us that in them she has laid up her jewels and masterpieces and this if we are a bit diligent in observing she shall find her method throughout there is no curiosity in the elemental kingdom if I may so call the bodies of air, water and earth that are comparable in form to those of minerals air and water having no form at all unless a potentiality to be formed into globules and the clods and parcels of earth are all irregular whereas in minerals she does again to geometries and practice as the first principles of mechanics shaping them of plain regular figures as triangles squares etc and tetradons cubes etc but none of their forms are comparable to the more compounded ones of vegetables for here she goes a step further forming them both of more complicated shapes and adding also multitudes of curious mechanic contrivances in their structure for whereas in vegetables there was no determinant number of the leaves or branches nor no exactly certain figure of leaves or flowers or seeds in animals all those things are exactly defined and determined and wherever there is either an excess or defect of those determinant parts or limbs there has been some impediment that has spoiled the principle which was most regular here we shall find not only most curiously compounded shapes but most stupendious mechanisms and contrivances here the ornaments are in the highest perfection nothing in all the vegetable kingdom that is comparable to the deckings of a peacock the curiosity of any feather as I elsewhere shoe nor to that of the smallest and most despicable fly but I must not stay on these speculations though perhaps it were very well worthwhile for one that had leisure to see what information may be learned of the nature or use or virtues of bodies by their several forms and various excellencies and properties who knows but Adam might from some such contemplation give names to all creatures if at least his names had any significance see in them of the creature's nature on which he imposed it as many upon what grounds I know not have supposed and who knows but the creator may in those characters have written and engraven many of his most mysterious designs and counsels and given man a capacity which assisted with diligence and industry may be able to read and understand them but not to multiply my digression more than I can the time I will proceed to the next which is end of section 34 by Robert Hook section 35 observation 30 of the seeds of poppy the small seeds of poppy which are described in the Scheme 19 both for their smallness multiplicity and prettiness as also for their admirable soporific quality deserve to be taken notice of among the other microscopical seeds of vegetables for the small seeds of vegetables for first though they grow in a case or hive often times bigger than one of these pictures of the microscopical appearance yet are they for the most part so very little that they exceed not the bulk of a small net being not above one 30 second part of an inch in diameter whereas the diameter of the hive of them often times exceeds two inches so that it is capable of containing near 200,000 and so in all likelihood does contain a vast quantity though perhaps not that number next for their prettiness they may be compared to any microscopical seed I have yet seen for they are of a dark brownish red color curiously honeycombed all over with a very pretty variety of network or a small kind of embossment of very orderly raised ridges the surface of them looking not unlike the inside of a bee's stomach but that which makes it most considerable of all is the medicinal virtues of it which are such as are not afforded us by any mineral preparation and that is for the procuring of sleep a thing as necessary to the well being of a creature as his meat and that which refreshes both the voluntary and rational faculties which whilst this affection has seized the body are for the most part unmoved and at rest and me thinks nature does seem to hint some very notable virtue or excellency in this plant from the curiosity it has bestowed upon it first in its flower it is of the highest scarlet dye which is indeed the prime and chiefest color and has been in all ages of the world most highly esteemed next it has as much curiosity showed also in the husk or case of the seed as any one plant I have yet met withal and thirdly the very seeds themselves the microscope discovers to be very curiously shaped bodies and lastly nature has taken such abundant care for the propagation of it that one single seed grown into a plant is capable of bringing some hundred thousands of seeds it were very worthy some able man's inquiry whether the intention of nature as to the secondary end of animal possible substances might not be found out by some such characters and notable impressions as these or from diverse other circumstances as the figure color place time of flourishing springing and fading duration taste smell etc for if such there are as an able physician upon good grounds has given me cause to believe we might then instead of studying herbals were so little delivered of the virtues of a plant and less of truth have recourse to the book of nature itself and there find the most natural useful and most effectual and specific medicines of which we have amongst vegetables to very noble instances to encourage such a hope the one of the Jesuit powder for the cure of intermittent fevers and the other of the juice of poppy for the curing the defect of sleeping and of section 35 section 36 of micrographia this is a LibriVox recording a LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Dion Giants Salt Lake City, Utah micrographia by Robert Hook section 36 observation 31 of purslane seed the seeds of purslane seem of very notable shapes appearing through the microscope shaped somewhat like a nautilus or porcelain shell as may be seen in the 20 scheme it being a small body coiled round in the manner of a spiral at the greater end whereof which represents the mouth or orifice of the shell a little white transparent substance like a skin represented by BBBB which seems to have been the place wherein to the stem was joined the whole surface of this cochlea or shell is covered over with abundance of little prominences or buttons very orderly ranged into spiral rows the shape of each of which seems to resemble a wart upon a man's hand the order, variety and curiosity in the shape of this little seed makes it a very pleasant object for the microscope one of them being cut asunder with a very sharp pen knife discovered this carved casket to be of a brownish red and somewhat transparent substance and manifested the inside to be filled with each green substance or pulp the bed wherein the seminal principle lies enveloped there are multitudes of other seeds which in shape represent or imitate the forms of diverse other sorts of shells as the seed of scurvy grass very much resembles the make of a concha veneria a kind of persilent shell with a variety of texture fruits sweat marjoram and pot marjoram represent olives carrot seeds are like a cleft of a coconut husk others are like artificial things as succary seeds are like a quiver full of arrows the seeds of amaranthus are of an exceeding lovely shape somewhat like an eye the skin of the black leaves are all over nobbed like a seal's skin sorrel has a pretty black shining three square seed which is picked at both ends with three ridges that are bent the whole length of it it were almost endless to reckon up the several shapes they are so many and so various leaving them therefore to the curious observer I shall proceed with some observations on the parts of animals and of section 36 section 37 of micrographia this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org micrographia by Robert Hooke section 37 observation 32 several sorts of hair and of the texture of the skin viewing some of the hairs of my head with a very good microscope I took notice of these particulars one that they were for the most part cylindrical some of them were somewhat prismatical but generally they were very near round such as are represented in the second figure of the fifth scheme by the cylinders EEE nor could I find any that had sharp angles two that that part which was next the top was bigger than that which was nearer of the root three that they were all along from end to end transparent though not very clear then end next the root appearing like a black transparent piece of horn the end next the top more brown somewhat like horn four that the root of the hairs were pretty smooth tapering inwards almost like a parsnep nor could I find that it had any filaments or any other vessels such as the fibers of plants five that the top when split which is common in long hair appeared like the end of the stick beat until it be all filtered there being not only two splinters but sometimes half a score and more six that they were all as far as I was able to find solid cylindrical bodies not pervious like a cane or bull rush nor could I find that they had any pith or distinction of rind or the like such as I had observed in horse hairs the bristles of a cat the indian deer's hair etc observations on several other sorts of hair for the bristles of a hog I found them to be first a hard transparent horny substance without the least appearance of pores or holes in it and this I tried with the greatest care I was able cutting many of them with a very sharp razor so that they appeared even in the glass to have a pretty smooth surface but somewhat waived by the saving to and fro of the razor as is visible in the end of the prismatical body A of the same figure and then making trials with causing the light to be cast on them all the various ways I could think of that was likely to make the pores appear if there had been any I was not able to discover any next the figure of the bristles was very various neither perfectly round nor sharp damaged but prismatical with diverse sides and round angles as appears in the figure A the bending of them in any part where they before appeared clear would all flow them and make them look white the mostatious of a cat part of one of which is represented by the short cylinder B of the same figure seem to have all of them that I observed a large piece in the middle like the piece of an elder whose texture was so close that I was not able to discover the least sign of pores and those parts which seem to be pores as they appeared in one position to the light in another I could find a manifest reflection to be cast from them this I instance in to hint that it is not safe to conclude anything to be positively this or that though it appeared never so plain and likely when looked on with microscope in one posture before the same be examined by placing it in several other positions and this I take to be the reason why many have believed and asserted the hairs of a man's head to be hollow and like so many small pipes perforated from end to end now though I grant that by an analogy one may suppose them so and from the polonian disease one may believe them such yet I think we have not the least encouragement to either from the microscope much less positively to assert them such and perhaps the very essence of the plica polonica may be the hairs growing hollow and off an unnatural constitution and as for the analogy though I am apt enough to think that the hairs of several animals may be perforated somewhat like a cane or at least have a kind of pith in them first because they seem as it were a kind of vegetable growing on an animal which growing they say remains a long while after the animal is dead and therefore should like other vegetables have a pith and secondly because horns and feathers and porcupine quills and cats bristles and the long hairs of horses which come very near the nature of a man's hair seem all of them to have a kind of pith and some of them to be porous yet I think it not in the cases where we have such helps for the sense as the microscope affords safe concluding or building on more than we sensibly know since we may by examining find that nature does in the make of the same kind of substance often vary her method in framing of it instances enough to confirm this we may find in the horns of several creatures as what a vast difference is there between the horns of an ox and those of some sorts of stags as to their shape and even in the hairs of several creatures we find a vast difference as the hair of a man's head seems as I said before long cylindrical and sometime a little prismatic solid or impervious and very small the hair of an Indian deer a part of the middle of which is described in the third figure of the fifth scheme marked with F is bigger in compass through all the middle of it then the bristle of an hog but the end of it is smaller than the hair of any kind of animal as may be seen by the figure G the whole belly of it which is about 2 or 3 inches long looks to the eye like a thread of coarse canvas that has been newly unrest it being all waved or banded to and fro much after that manner but through the microscope it appears all perforated from side to side and spongy like a small kind of spongy coral which is often found upon the English shores but though I cut it transversely I could not perceive that it had any pores that ran the long way of the hair the long hairs of horses C, C and D seem cylindrical and somewhat pithy the bristles of a cat B are conical and pithy the quills of porcupines and hedgehogs being cut transversely have a whitish pith in the manner of a star or a roll because hair A is somewhat triagonal and seems to have neither pith nor pore and other kinds of hair have quite a differing structure and form and therefore I think it no way agreeable to a true natural historian to pretend to be so sharp-sighted as to see what a preconceived hypothesis tells them should be there where another man being but not forestalled can discover no such matter but to proceed I observed several kind of hairs that had been dyed and found them to be a kind of horny cylinder being of much about the transparency of a pretty clear piece of ox horn these appeared quite throughout tinged with the colors they exhibited and it is likely that those hairs being boiled or steeped in those very hot tinged liquors in the dye fat and the substance of the hair being much like that of an ox horn the penetrant liquor does so far mollify and soften the substance that it sinks into the very center of it and so the tinged parts come to be mixed and united with the very body of the hair and do not, as some have thought only stick on upon the outward surface and this, the boiling of horn will make more probable for we shall find by that action that the water will insinuate itself to a pretty depth within the surface of it especially if this penetrancy of the water be much helped by the salts that are usually mixed with dying liquors now whereas silk may be dyed or tinged into all kind of colors without boiling or dipping into hot liquors I guess the reason to be twofold first, because the filaments or small cylinders of silk are abundantly smaller and finer and so have a much less depth to be penetrated than most kind of hairs and next, because the substance or matter of silk is much more like a glue than the substance of hair and that I have reason to suppose first because when it is spun or drawn out of the warm it is a perfect glutinous substance and very easily sticks and cleaves to any adjacent body as I have several times observed both in silkworms and spiders next because that I find that water does easily dissolve and mollify the substance again which is evident from their manner of ordering those bottoms or pods of the silkworm before they are able to unwind them it is no great wonder therefore if those dyes or tinged liquors do very quickly mollify and tinge the surfaces of so small and so glutinous a body and we need not wonder that the colors appear so lovely in the one and so dull in the other if we view but the tinge cylinders of both kinds with a good microscope for various the substance of hair at best is but a dirty duskish white somewhat transparent the filaments of silk have a most lovely transparency and clearness the difference between those two being not much less than that between a piece of horn and a piece of crystal the one yielding a bright and vivid reflection from the concave side of the cylinder that is from the concave surface of the air that encompasses the back part of the cylinder the other yielding a dull and perturbed reflection from the several heterogeneous parts that compose it and this difference will be manifest enough to the eye if you get a couple of small cylinders the smaller of crystal glass the other of horn and then varnishing them over very thinly with some transparent color which will represent to the naked eye much the same kind of object which is represented to it from the filaments of silk and hair by the help of the microscope now since the threads of silk and surge are made up of a great number of these filaments we may henceforth cease to wonder at the difference for much the same reason proceeds the vivid and lovely colors of feathers wherein they very far exceed the natural as well as artificial colors of hair of which I shall say more in its proper place the tecuments indeed of creatures are all of them adapted to the peculiar use and convenience of that animal which they interrupt and very much also for the ornament and beauty of it as will be most evident to anyone that shall attentively consider the various kinds of clothings wherewith most creatures are by nature invested and covered thus I have observed that the hair or fur of those northern white bears that inhabit the colder regions is exceedingly thick and warm the like have I observed of the hair of a Greenland deer which being brought alive to London I had the opportunity of viewing its hair was so thick, long and soft that I could hardly with my hand grasp or take hold of his skin and it seemed so exceeding warm as I have never met with any before and as for the ornamentative use of them it is most evident in a multitude of creatures not only for color as the leopards, cats, reindeer etc but for the shape as in horses, maines cats, beards and several other of the greater sort of terrestrial animals but is much more conspicuous in the vestments of fishes birds, insects of which I shall by and by give some instances as for the skin the microscope discovers as great a difference between the texture of those several kinds of animals as it does between their hairs with all that I have yet taken notice of when tanned or dressed in a spongy nature and seem to be constituted of an infinite company of small long fibers or hairs which look not unlike a heap of toe or oakum every of which fibers seem to have been some part of a muscle and probably whilst the animal was alive might have its distinct function and serve for the contraction and relaxation of the skin and for the stretching and shrinking of it this way and indeed without such a kind of texture as this which is very like that of sponk it would seem very strange how anybody so strong as the skin of an animal usually is and so close as it seems whilst the animal is living should be able to suffer so great an extension anyways without at all hurting or delacerating any part of it but since we are informed by the microscope that it consists of a great many small filaments which are implicated or entangled one within another almost no otherwise than the hairs in a log of wool or the flakes in a heap of toe though not altogether so loose but the filaments are here and there twisted as it were or interwoven and here and there they join and unite with one another so as indeed the whole skin seems to be but one piece we need not much wonder and though these fibers appear not through a microscope exactly jointed or contexted as in sponge yet as I formally hinted I am apt to think that could we find some way of discovering the texture of it whilst it invests the living animal or had some very easy way of separating the pulp or intercurrent juices such as in all probability fill those interstitia without delacerating bruising or otherwise spoiling the texture of it as it seems to be very much by the ways of tanning and dressing now used we might discover a much more curious texture than I have hitherto been able to find perhaps somewhat like that of sponges that of chamois leather is indeed very much like that of sponk have only that the filaments seem nothing near so even and round nor altogether so small nor has it so curious joints as sponk has some of which I have lately discovered like those of a sponge and perhaps all these three bodies may be of the same kind of substance though two of them indeed are commonly accounted vegetable which whether they be so or no I shall not now dispute but this seems common to all three that they undergo a tanning or dressing whereby the interspersed juices are wasted and washed away before the texture of them can be discovered what their way is of dressing or curing sponges I confess I cannot learn but the way of dressing sponk is a good while in the strong lexibium and then beating it very well and the manner of dressing leather is sufficiently known it were indeed extremely desirable if such a way could be found whereby the parent kaima or flesh of the muscles and several other parts of the body might be washed or wafted clean away without reshating the form of the fibrous parts or vessels of it for hereby the texture of the old parts by the help of a good microscope might be most accurately found but to digress now further we may from this discovery of the microscope plainly enough understand how the skin though it looks so close as it does comes to give a passage to so vast a quantity of extra-mentitious substances as the diligent sanctorious has excellently observed it to do in his medicina statica for it seems very probable from the texture after dressing that there are an infinite of pores that every way pierce it and that those pores are only filled with some kind of juice or some very pulpy soft substance and thereby the steams may almost as easily find a passage through such a fluid vehicle as the vaporous bubbles which are generated at the bottom of the kettle of hot water do find a passage through that fluid medium into the ambient air nor is the skin of animals only as pervious but even those of vegetables also seem to be the same for otherwise I cannot can see why if two sprigs of rosemary for instance be taken as exactly alike in all our particulars as can be and the one be set with the bottom in a glass of water and the other be set just without the glass but in the air only though you stop the lower end of that in the air very carefully with wax yet shall it presently almost wither whereas the others that seems to have a supply from the subjacent water by its small pipes or microscopical pores preserves its greatness for many days and sometimes weeks now this to me seems not likely to proceed from any other cause than the avolation of the juice through the skin for by the wax all those other pores of the stem are very firmly and closely stopped up and from the more or less porousness of the skins or rinse of vegetables may perhaps be somewhat of the reason given why they keep longer green or sooner wither for we may observe by the bladering and creaking of the leaves of bays, holly, laurel, etc that their skins are very close and do not suffer so free a passage through them of the included juices but of this and of the experiment of the rosemary I shall elsewhere more fully consider seeming to me an extreme luciferous experiment such as seems indeed very plainly to prove that schematism or structure of vegetables altogether mechanical and as necessary that water and warmth being applied to the bottom of the sprig of a plant some of it should be carried upwards into the stem and then distributed into the leaves as that the water of the thames covering the bottom of the mills at the bridge foot of London and by the ebbing and flowing of it passing strongly by them should have some part of it conveyed to the cisterns above and then into the several houses and cisterns up and down the city end of section 37 having hinted somewhat of the skin and covering of terrestrial animals I shall next add an observation I made on the skin and scales of a soul a small fish commonly enough known and here in fishes as well as other animals nature follows its usual method framing all parts so as that they are both useful and ornamental in all its composures mingling, utile and dulce together and both these designs it seems to follow though our unassisted senses are not able to perceive them this is not only manifest in the covering of this fish but in multitudes of others which would be too long to enumerate witness particularly that small sand shell which I had mentioned in the 11 observation and infinite other small shells and scales diverse of which I have viewed this skin I viewed was freed from pretty large soul and then I landed and dried the inside of it when dry to the naked eye looked very like a piece of canvas but the microscope discovered their texture to be nothing else but the inner ends of those curious call-up scales I, I, I in the second figure of the 21 scheme namely the part of G, G, G, G of the larger representation of a single scale in the first figure of the same scheme which on the backside through an ordinary single magnifying glass looked not unlike the tiles in a house the outside of it to the naked eye exhibited nothing more of ornament save the usual order of ranging the scales into a diagonal form only the edges seemed a little to shine the finger being rubbed from the tail words towards the head the scale seemed to stay and raise it but through an ordinary magnifying glass it exhibited a most curiously carved in adorned surface such as is visible in a second figure each of those formally almost imperceptible scales appearing much of the shape I, I, I that is they were round and protuberant and somewhat shaped like a scallop the whole scale being creased with curiously waved and indented ridges with proportionable furrows between each of which was terminated with a very sharp transparent bony substance which like so many small turnpacks seemed to arm the edges the back part K, K, K was the skin into which each of these scales were very deeply fixed in the curious regular order visible in the second figure the length and shape of the part of the scale which was buried by the skin is evidenced by the first figure which is the representation of one of them plucked out in you through a good microscope namely the part L, F, G, G, F, L wherein is also more plainly to be seen the manner of carving of the scalloped part of every particular scale how each ridge or bar E, E, E is alternatively hollowed or engraven and how every cutter between them is terminated with very transparent and hard-pointed spikes and how every other of these as A, A, A, A are much longer than the interjacent ones D, D, D the texture or form also of the hidden part appears namely the middle part G, G, G seems to consist of a great number of small quills or pipes by which perhaps the hole may be nourished and the side parts F, F consist of a more fibrous texture though indeed the whole scale seem to be of a very tough greasy substance like the larger scales of other fishes the scales of the skin of a dogfish which is used by such as work in wood for the smoothing of their work and consists plainly enough to the naked eye of a great number of small horny points through the microscope appeared each of them curiously rich and very neatly carved and indeed you can hardly look on the scales of any fish but you may discover abundance of curiosity and beautifying and not only in these fishes but in the shells and crusts or armor of most sorts of marine animals so invested and a section 38 section 39 of micrographia this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org micrographia by Robert Hook section 39 observation 34 of the sting of a bee the sting of a bee delineated in the second figure of the 16th scheme seems to be a weapon of offense and is as great an instance that nature did really intend revenge as any in the first because there seems to be no other use of it secondly by reason of its admirable shape seeming to be purposely shaped for that very end thirdly from the virulency of the liquor it ejects and the sad effects and symptoms that follow it but whatever be the use of it certain it is that the structure of it is very admirable what it appears to the naked eye I need not describe the thing being known almost to everyone but it appears through the microscope to consist of two parts the one a sheath without a shape shaped almost like the holster of a pistol beginning at D and ending at B this sheath I could most plainly perceive to be hollow and to contain in it both a sword or dart and the poisonous liquor that causes the pain the sheath or case seem to have several joints or settings together marked by F-G-H-I-K-L-M-N-O it was armed more over near the top with several crooks or forks P-Q-R-S-T on one side and P-Q-R-S-T-U on the other each of which seemed like so many thorns growing on a briar or rather like so many cats claws for the crooks themselves seem to be little sharp transparent points or claws growing out of little protuberances on the side of the sheath which by observing the figure diligently is easy enough to be perceived and from several particulars I suppose the animal has the power of displaying them and shutting them in again as it pleases as a cat does its claws or as an adder or viper can its teeth or fangs the other part of the sting was the sword as I may so call it which is sheathed as it were in it the top of which A-B appears quite through at the smaller end just as if the shape of the sheath of a sword was lost and the end of it appeared beyond the scabbard the end of this dart A was very sharp and it was armed likewise with the like tender hooks or claws with those of the sheath such as V-X-Y X-Y-Z-Z these crooks I am very apt to think can be closed up also or laid flat to the sides of the sword when it is drawn into the scabbard as I have several times observed it to be and can be spread again or extended whenever the animal pleases the consideration of which very pretty structure has hinted to me that certainly the use of these claws seems to be very considerable as to the main end of this instrument for the drawing in and holding the sting in the flesh for the point being very sharp the top of the sting or dagger A-B is very easily thrust into an animal's body which being once entered the B by endeavoring to pull it into the sheath draws by reason of the crooks V-X-Y and X-Y-Z-Z which lay hold of the skin on either side the top of the sheath T-S-R-V into the skin after it and the crooks T-S and R-V being entered when the B endeavors to thrust out the top of the sting out of the sheath again they lay hold of the skin on either side and do not only keep the sheath from sliding back but helps the top inwards and thus by an alternate and successive retracting and emitting of the sting in and out of the sheath the little enraged creature by degrees makes his revengeful weapon pierce the toughest and thickest hides of his enemies and so much that some few of these stout and resolute soldiers with these little engines do often put to flight a huge nasty bear one of their deadly enemies and thereby show the world how much more considerable in war a few skillful engineers and resolute soldiers politically ordered that know how to manage such engines are than a vast unwieldy rude force that confides in and acts only by its strength but to proceed that he thus gets in his sting into the skin I conjecture because when I have observed this creature living I have found it to move the sting thus to and fro and thereby also perhaps does as to her pump or force out the poisonous liquor and make it hang at the end of the sheath about B in a drop the crooks I suppose also to be the cause why these angry creatures hastily removing themselves from their revenge do often leave these weapons behind them sheathed as twer in the flesh and by that means cause the painful symptoms to be greater and more lasting which are very probably caused partly by the piercing and tearing of the skin by the sting but chiefly by the corrosive and poisonous liquor that is by this syringe pipe conveyed among the sensitive parts thereof and thereby more easily gnaws and corrodes those tender fibers as I have showed in the description of a nettle and of cowage end of section 39 recording by Philip Gould section 40 of micrographia this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org micrographia by Robert Hooke section 40 observation 35 of the contextual in shape of the particles of feathers examining several sorts of feathers I took notice of these particulars in all sorts of wing feathers especially in those which served for the beating of the air in the action of flying at the outward surface of the quill and stem was of a very hard stiff and horny substance which is obvious enough and that the part above the quill was filled with a very white and light pith and with the microscope I found this pith to be nothing else but a kind of natural congeries of small bubbles the films of which seem to be of the same substance with that of the quill that is of a stiff transparent horny substance which particular seems to me very worthy a more serious consideration for here we may observe nature as twer put to its shifts to make a substance which shall be both light enough and very stiff and strong without varying from its own established principles which we may observe to be such that very strong bodies are for the most part very heavy also a strength of the parts usually requiring a density and a density a gravity and therefore should nature have made a body so broad and so strong as a feather almost any other way than what it has taken the gravity of it must necessarily have many times exceeded this for this pith seems to be like so many stops or cross pieces in a long optical tube which do very much contribute to the strength of the whole the pores of which were such as that they seem not to have any communication with one another as I have elsewhere hinted but the mechanism of nature is usually so excellent that one in the same substance is adapted to serve for many ends for the chief use of this indeed seems to be for the supply of nourishment to the downy or feathery part of the stem for tis obvious enough in all sorts of feathers that tis placed just under the roots of the branches that grow out of either side of the quill or stalk exactly shaped according to the ranking of those branches coming no lower end of the quill than just the beginning of the downy branches and growing only on the underside of the quill where those branches do so now in a ripe feather as one may call it it seems difficult to conceive how the succus nutritius should be conveyed to this pith for it cannot I think be well imagined to pass through the substance of the quill since having examined it its diligence I was able I could not find the least appearance of pores but he that shall well examine an unripe or pin feather will plainly enough perceive that the vessel for the conveyance of it to be the thin filmy pith as tis called which passes through the middle of the quill as for the making texture of the down itself it is indeed very rare and admirable and such as I can hardly believe that the like is to be discovered in any other body in the world for there is hardly a large feather in the wing of a bird but contains near a million of distinct parts and every one of them shaped in a most regular and admirable form adapted to a particular design for examining a middle-sized goose quill I easily enough found with my naked eye that the main stem of it contained about three hundred longer and more downy branchings upon one side and as many on the other have more stiff but somewhat shorter branchings many of these long and downy branchings examined with an ordinary microscope I found divers of them to contain near twelve hundred small leaves as I may call them such as EF of this first figure of the twenty second scheme and as many stalks on the other side such as IK of the same figure each of the leaves or branchings EF seem to be divided into about sixteen or eighteen little joints as may be seen plainly enough in the figure out of most of which there seem to grow small long fibers such as are expressed in the figure each of them very proportionably shaped according to its position or placed on the stalk EF those on the underside of it namely one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, etc. being much longer than those directly opposite to them on the upper and divers of them such as two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, etc. were terminated with small crooks much resembling those small crooks which are visible enough to the naked eye in the seed buttons of burducks the stalks likewise IK on the other side seem divided into near as many small knotted joints but without any appearance of strings or crooks each of them about the middle seem divided into two parts by a kind of fork on one side of which, namely KL, was extended near the length of KI the other M was very short the transverse sections of the stems of these branchings manifested the shape or figure of it to be much like INOE which consisted of a horny skin or covering and a white seemingly frothy pith like of the main stem of a feather the use of this strange kind of form is indeed more admirable than all the rest and as such deserved to be much more seriously examined and considered than I have hitherto found time or ability to do for certainly it may very much instruct us in the nature of the air especially as to some properties of it the stems of the downy branches INOE being ranged in the order visible enough to the naked eye by F or somewhat more the collateral stalks and leaves if I may so call those bodies I newly described are so ranged that the leaves are hairy stalks of the one side lie at top or are incumbent on the stalks of the other and cross each other much after the manner expressed in the second figure of the 22nd scheme by which means every of those little hooked fibers of the leaves stalk get between the naked stalks and the stalks being full of knots and a pretty way disjoined so is that the fibers can easily get between them the two parts are so closely and admirably woven together that it is able to impede for the greatest part the transcursion of the air and though they are so exceeding small as that the thickness of one of those stalks amounts not to a five hundredth part of an inch yet do they compose so strong a texture notwithstanding the exceeding quick and violent beating of them against the air by the strength of the bird's wing they firmly hold together and it argues an admirable providence of nature in the contrivance and fabric of them for their texture is such that though by any external injury the parts of them are violently disjoined so is that the leaves and stalks touch not one another and consequently several of these rints would impede the birds flying for the greatest part of themselves they readily rejoin and re-context themselves and are easily by the bird stroking the feather or drawing it through its bill all of them settled and woven into their former and natural posture for there are such an infinite company of those small fibers in the underside of the leaves and most of them have such little crooks at their ends that they readily catch and hold the stalks they touch from which strange contexture is rational to suppose that there is a certain kind of mesh or hole so small that air will not very easily pass through it as I hinted also in the sixth observation about small glass canes for otherwise it seems probable that nature would have drawn over some kind of thin film which should have covered all those almost square meshes or holes they're seeming through the microscope to be more than half of the surface of the feather which is open to this which conjecture will yet seem more probable from the texture of the brushy wings of the Tenea Argentea or White Feather winged moth which I shall anon describe but nature that knows best its own laws and the several properties of bodies knows also best how to adapt and fit them to her desired end and who so would know those properties must endeavour to trace nature in its working and to see and this I suppose will be no inconsiderable advantage which the schematisms and structures of animate bodies will afford the diligent inquirer namely most sure and excellent instructions both as to the practical part of mechanics and to the theory and knowledge of the nature of the bodies and motions end of section 40 recording by Philip Gould section 41 of micrographia this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org micrographia by Robert Hook section 41 observation 36 of peacocks, ducks and other feathers of changeable colors the parts of the feathers of this glorious bird appear through the microscope no less gaudy than do the whole feathers for as to the naked eye tis evident that the stem or quill of each feather in the tail sends out multitudes of lateral branches such as A, B in the third figure of the twenty second scheme represents a small part of about one thirty second part of an inch long and each of the lateral branches emit multitudes of little sprigs threads or hairs on either side of them such as CD CD CD so each of those threads in the microscope appears a large, long body consisting of a multitude of bright reflecting parts whose figure tis no easy matter to determine as he that examines it shall find for every new position of it to the light makes it perfectly seem of another form and shape and nothing what it appeared a little before nay it appeared very differing off times from so seemingly inconsiderable a circumstance that the interposing of one's hand between the light and it makes a very great change and the opening or shutting a casement and the like very much diversifies the appearance and though by examining the form of it very many ways which would be tedious here to enumerate I suppose I have discovered the true figure of it yet often times upon looking on it in another posture I have almost thought my former observations deficient though indeed upon further examination I have found even those also to confirm them these threads therefore I find to be a congeries of small laminae or plates as E E E E E etc. each of them shaped much like this of A B C D in the fourth figure the part A C being a ridge, prominency or stem and B and D the corners of two small thin plates that grow into the small stalk in the middle so that they make a kind of little feather each of these plates lie one close to another almost like a company of sloping ridge or gutter tiles they grow on each side of the stock opposite to one another by two and two from top to bottom in the manner expressed in the fifth figure the tops of the lower covering the roots of the next above them the underside of each of these laminated bodies is of a very dark and opatious substance and suffers very few rays to be rejected but reflects them all toward that side from whence they come much like the foil of a looking glass but their upper side seem to me to consist of a multitude of thin plated bodies which are exceeding thin and lie very close together and thereby like mother of pearl shells do not only reflect a very brisk light but tinge that light in a most thinner and by means of various positions in respect of the light they reflect back now one color and then another and those most vividly now that these colors are only fantastical ones that is such as arise immediately from the refractions of the light I found by this that water wetting these colored parts destroyed their colors which seemed to proceed from the alteration of the reflection and refraction now though I was not able to see those hairs at all transparent by a common light yet by looking on them against the sun I found them to be tinged with a darkish red color nothing akin to the curious and lovely greens and blues they exhibited what the reason of color seems to be in such thin plated bodies I have elsewhere shown but how water cast upon those threads destroys their colors I suppose to be performed thus the water falling upon these plated bodies from its greater congruity to feathers than the air insinuates itself between those plates and so extrudes the strong reflecting air when both these parts grow more transparent as the microscope informs and colorless also at best retaining a very faint and dull color but this wet being wasted away by the continual evaporations and steams that pass through them from the peacock whilst that bird is yet alive the colors again appear in their former luster the interstitia of these plates being filled with the strongly reflecting air the beauteous and vivid colors of the feathers of this bird being found to proceed from the curious and exceeding smallness and fineness of the reflecting parts we have here the reason given us of all those godaries in the apparel of other birds also and how they come to exceed the colors of all other kinds of animals besides insects for sense as we hear elsewhere also show the vividness of a color depends upon the fineness and transparency of the reflecting and refracting parts and since our microscope discovers to us that the component parts of feathers are such and that the hairs of animals are otherwise and since we find also by the experiment of that noble and most excellent person I formerly named that the difference between silk and flax as to its color is nothing else for flax reduced to a very great fineness of parts both white and colored appears as white and as vivid as any silk but loses that brightness and its silken aspect as soon as it is twisted into thread by reason that the component parts though very small and fine are yet pliable flakes and not cylinders and thins by twisting become united into one opatious body whereas the threads of silk and feathers retain their luster by preserving their cylindrical form entire without mixing so that each reflected and refracting beam that composes the gloss of silk preserves its own property of modulating the light entire and since we find the same confirmed by many other experiments elsewhere mentioned I think we may safely conclude this for an axiom that were so ever we meet with transparent bodies spun out into very fine parts either clear or anyways tinge the colors resulting from such a composition must necessarily be very glorious vivid and clear like those of silk and feathers this may perhaps hint some useful way of making other bodies besides silk be susceptible of bright tinctures but of this only by the by the changeable colored feathers also of ducks and several other birds I have found by examination with my microscope to proceed from much the same causes and textures end of section 41 recording by Philip Gould section 42 of micrographia this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by John Brandon micrographia by Robert Hook observation 37 of the feet of flies and several other objects the foot of a fly delineated in the first figure of the 23 scheme which represents three joints the two talons and the two patterns in a flat posture and in the second figure of the same scheme which represents only one joint the talons and patterns in another posture is of a most admirable and curious contrivance for by this the flies are enabled to walk against the sides of glass perpendicularly upwards and to contain themselves in that posture as long as they please need to walk and suspend themselves against the under surface of many bodies as the ceiling of a room or the like and this with as great a seeming facility and firmness as if they were a kind of antipods and had a tendency upwards as we are sure they have the contrary which they also evidently discover in that they cannot make themselves so light as to stick or suspend themselves on the under surface of a glass well polished and cleansed their suspension therefore is wholly to be ascribed to some mechanical contrivance in their feet which what it is we shall in brief explain by showing that its mechanism consists principally in two parts that is first its two claws or talons and secondly two palms patterns or soles the two talons are very large in proportion to the foot and handsomely shaped in the matter described in the figures by A, B and A, C the bigger part of them from A to D, D is all hairy or bristled but toward the top at C and B smooth the tops or points which seem very sharp turning downwards and inwards are each of them moved on a joint at A by which the fly is able to open or shot them at pleasure so that the points B and C being entered in any pores and the fly endeavoring to shot them the claws not only draw one against another and so fasten each other but they draw the whole foot B, A, D, D forward so that on a soft footing the tenders or points G, G, G, G whereof a fly has about ten in each foot two wit, two in every joint run into the pores if they find any or at least make their way this is sensible to the naked eye in the feet of a chaffer which if he be suffered to creep over the hand or any other part of the skin his body does make his steps as sensible to the touch as the sight by this contrivance as it often fails the chaffer when he walks on hard and close bodies so would it also our fly though he be a much lesser and nimbler creature and therefore nature has furnished his foot with another additiment much more curious and admirable and that is with a couple of palms, patterns and soles D, the structure of which is this from the bottom or under part of the last joint of his foot, K arise two small thin plated horny substances each consisting of two flat pieces D, D, which seem to be flexible like the covers of a book about F, F by which means the planes of the two sides E, E do not always lie in the same plane but maybe sometimes shot closer so each of them may take a little hold themselves on a body but that is not all for the undersides of these soles are all beset with small bristles or tenters like the wire teeth of a card used for working wool, the points of all which tend forwards hence the two talons drawing the feet forwards as I before hinted and these being applied to the surface of the body with all the points looking the contrary way that is forwards and outwards if there be any irregularity or yielding in the surface of the body the fly suspends itself very firmly and easily without the access or need of any such sponges filled with an imaginary gluten as many have for want of good glasses perhaps or troublesome and diligent examination supposed now that the fly able to walk on glass proceeds partly from some ruggedness of the surface and chiefly from a kind of tarnish or dirty smoky substance which adheres to the surface of that very hard body and though the pointed parts cannot penetrate the surface of glass yet may they find pores enough in the tarnish or at least make them this structure I somewhat more diligently surveyed did not well comprehend how if there were such a glutinous matter in those supposed sponges as most that have observed that object in a microscope have hitherto believed how I say the fly could so readily unglue and loosen its feet and because I have not found any other creature to have a contrivance any ways like it and chiefly that we might not be cast upon unintelligible interpretations of the phenomena of nature at least others than the true ones where our senses were able to furnish us with an intelligible rational and true one somewhat alike contrivance to this a flies shall we find in most other animals such as all kinds of flies and case winged creatures may in a flea an animal abundantly smaller than this fly creatures as mites land crab etc have only one small very sharp talon at the end of each of their legs which all trying towards the center or middle of their body enable these exceeding light bodies to suspend and fasten themselves to almost any surface which how they are able to do will not seem strange if we consider first how little body there is in one of these creatures compared to their super bodies or outside their thickness perhaps oftentimes not amounting to the hundredth part of an inch next the strength and agility of these creatures compared to their bulk being proportionable to their bulk perhaps and hundred times stronger than an horse or man and thirdly if we consider that nature does not always appropriate the instruments so as they are the most fit and convenient to perform their offices and the most simple and plain that possibly can be this we may see further verified also in the foot of a Laos which is very much differing from those I have been describing but more convenient necessary for the place of its habitation each of his legs being footed with a couple of small claws which he can open or shot at pleasure shaped almost like the claws of a lobster or crab but with appropriated contrivances for his peculiar life which being to move its body to and fro upon the hairs of the creature it inhabits nature has furnished one of its claws with joints almost like the joints of a man's fingers so as thereby it is able to encompass or grasp a hair as firmly as a man can a stick or rope nor is there a less admirable and wonderful mechanism in the foot of a spider whereby he is able to spin weave and climb or run on his curious transparent clue of which I shall say more in the description of that animal and to conclude we shall in all things find that nature does not only work mechanically but by such excellent and most compendious as stupendious contrivances that it were impossible for all the reason in the world to find out any contrivance to do the same thing that should have more convenient properties and can any be so saddish as to think all those things the productions of chance certainly either their ratio the nation must be extremely depraved or they did never attentively consider and contemplate the works of the world and of section 42 recording by John Brandon