 Section 23 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 23. Observation 18. Of the schematism or texture of cork and of the cells and pores of some other such frothy bodies. I took a good clear piece of cork and with a pen knife sharpened as keen as a razor, I cut a piece of it off and thereby left the surface of it exceeding smooth. Then examining it very diligently with a microscope, me thought I could perceive it to appear a little porous. But I could not so plainly distinguish them as to be sure that they were pores much less what figure they were of. But judging from the lightness and yielding quality of the cork, that certainly the texture could not be so curious but that possibly, if I could use some further diligence, I might find it to be discernible with a microscope. I, with the same sharp pen knife, cut off from the former smooth surface and exceeding thin piece of it and placing it on a black object plate because it was itself a white body and casting the light on it with a deep planoconvex glass, I could exceeding plainly perceive it to be all perforated and porous much like a honeycomb but that the pores of it were not regular. Yet it was not unlike a honeycomb in these particulars. First, in that it had a very little solid substance in comparison of the empty cavity that was contained between as does more manifestly appear by the figure A and B of the 11 scheme. For the interstitia or walls as I may so call them or partitions of those pores were near as thin in proportion to their pores as those thin films of wax in a honeycomb which enclose and constitute the succangular cells are to theirs. Next, in that these pores or cells were not very deep but consisted of a great many little boxes separated out of one continued long pore by certain diaphragms as is visible by the figure B which represents a sight of those pores split the long ways. I know sooner discerned these which were indeed the first microscopical pores I ever saw and perhaps that were ever seen for I had not met with any writer or person that had made any mention of them before this. But me thought I had with the discovery of them presently hinted to me the true and intelligible reason of all the phenomena of cork. As first if I inquired why it was so exceeding light a body my microscope could presently inform me that here was the same reason evident that there is found for the lightness of froth. An empty honeycomb, wool, a sponge, a pumice stone or the like namely a very small quantity of a solid body extended into exceeding large dimensions. Next it seemed nothing more difficult to give an intelligible reason why cork is a body so very unapped to suck and drink in water and consequently preserves itself floating on the top of water though left on it never so long and why it is able to stop and hold air in a bottle though it be there very much condensed and consequently presses very strongly to get a passage out without suffering the least bubble to pass through its substance. For as to the first since our microscope informs us that the substance of cork is altogether filled with air and that that air is perfectly enclosed in little boxes or cells distinct from one another. It seems very plain why neither the water nor any other air can easily insinuate itself into them since there is already within them an intrus existence and consequently why the pieces of cork become so good floats for nets and stoppables for vials or other close vessels. And thirdly, if we inquire why cork has such a springiness and swelling nature when compressed and how it comes to suffer so great a compression or seeming penetration of dimensions so as to be made a substance as heavy again and more bulk for bulk as it was before compression and yet suffered to return is found to extend itself again into the same space. Our microscope will easily inform us that the whole mass consists of an infinite company of small boxes or bladders of air which is a substance of a springy nature and that will suffer a considerable condensation as I have several times found by diverse trials by which I have most evidently condensed it into less than a twentieth part of its usual dimensions near the earth and that with no other strength than that of my hands without any kind of forcing engine. Such as racks, levers, wheels, pulleys or the like but this only by and by and besides it seems very probable that those very films or sides of the pores have in them a springing quality as almost all other kind of vegetable substances have so as to help to restore themselves to their former position. And could we so easily and certainly discover the schematism and texture even of these films and of several other bodies as we can these of cork there seems no probable reason to the contrary but that we might as readily render the true reason of all their phenomena as namely what were the cause of the springiness and toughness of some but as to their flexibility and restitution. What of the friability or brittleness of some others and the like but till such time as our microscope or some other means enable us to discover the true schematism and texture of all kinds of bodies. We must grope as it were in the dark and only guess of the true reasons of things by similitudes and comparisons. But to return to our observation I told several lines of these pores and found that there were usually about 3 score of these small cells placed end ways in the 18th part of an inch in length. Once I concluded there must be near eleven hundred of them or somewhat more than a thousand in the length of an inch and therefore in a square inch above a million or one million one hundred sixty six thousand four hundred and in a cubic inch above twelve hundred millions or one billion two hundred fifty nine million seven hundred twelve thousand. A thing almost incredible did not our microscope assure us of it by ocular demonstration. Nay did it not discover to us the pores of a body which were they diaphragmed like those of cork would afford us in one cubic inch more than ten times as many little cells as is evident in several charred vegetables. So prodigiously curious are the works of nature that even these conspicuous pores of bodies which seem to be the channels or pipes through which the sucus nutritus or natural juices of vegetables are conveyed and seem to correspond to the veins, arteries and other vessels and sensible creatures that these pores I say which seem to be the vessels of nutrition to the vastest body in the world are yet so exceeding small that the atoms which epicurus fancied would go near to prove too big to enter them much more to constitute a fluid body in them. And how infinitely smaller then must be the vessels of a mite or the pores of one of those little vegetables I have discovered to grow on the backside of a rose leaf and shall a none more fully describe whose bulk is many millions of times less than the bulk of the small shrub it grows on and even that shrub many millions of times less in bulk than several trees that have heretofore grown in England and are this day flourishing in other hotter climates as we are very credibly informed if at least the pores of this small vegetable should keep any such proportion to the body of it as we have found these pores of other vegetables to do to their bulk but of these pores I have said more elsewhere. To proceed then cork seems to be by the transverse constitution of the pores a kind of fungus or mushroom for the pores lie like so many rays tending from the center or pith of the tree outwards so that if you cut off a piece from a board of cork transversely to the flat of it you will as it were split the pores and they will appear just as they are expressed in the figure B of the 11 scheme but if you shave off a very thin piece from this board parallel to the plane of it you will cut all the pores transversely and they will appear almost as they are expressed in the figure A save only the solid interstitia will not appear so thick as they are there represented so that cork seems to suck its nourishment from the subjacent bark of the tree immediately and to be a kind of excrescence or a substance distinct from the substances of the entire tree something analogous to the mushroom or moss on other trees or to the hairs on animals and having inquired into the history of cork I find it reckoned as an excresency of the bark of a certain tree which is distinct from the two barks that lie within it which are common also to other trees that tis some time before the cork that covers the young and tender sprouts comes to be discernible that it cracks, flaws and cleaves into many great chaps the bark underneath remaining entire that it may be separated and removed from the tree and yet the two under barks such as are also common to that with other trees not at all injured but rather helped and freed from an external injury thus Johnstonus in dendrologia speaking desubere says Arbor is prokera lignum estrobustum, dempto cortica in aqueous non fluidat, cortica in orbum detracto huator, crasquescans enem prestringet et strangulat, intratrienium iterum repletor, caudax ubi adulescat crasus cortac superior densus carnosus, duostiguitus crasus scaber rimosus et qui nisi detracto deriscat alioque subna scente expellator, interior qui subest novellus ita rubet ut arbor minio picta uriator which histories if well considered and the tree substance and manner of growing if well examined would I am very apt to believe much confirm this my conjecture about the origination of cork Nor is this kind of texture peculiar to cork only for upon examination with my microscope I have found that the pith of an elder or almost any other tree, the inner pulp or pith of the caney hollow stocks of several other vegetables as a fennel, carrots, docus, burdox, teasels, fern, some kinds of reeds et cetera have much such a kind of schematism as I have lately shown that of cork save only that here the pores arranged the long ways or the same ways with the length of the cane whereas in cork they are transverse the pith also that fills that part of the stock of a feather that is above the quill has much such a kind of texture save only that which way so ever I set this light substance the pores seem to be cut transversely so that I guess this pith which fills the feather not to consist of abundance of long pores separated with diaphragms as cork does but to be a kind of solid or hardened froth or a conjuries of very small bubbles consolidated in that form into a pretty stiff as well as tough concrete and that each cavern, bubble or cell is distinctly separate from any of the rest without any kind of hole in the encompassing films so that I could no more blow through a piece of this kind of substance than I could through a piece of cork or the sound pith of an elder but though I could not with my microscope nor with my breath nor any other way I have yet tried discover a passage out of one of those cavities into another yet I cannot then conclude that therefore there are none such by which the succus nutritius or appropriate juices of vegetables may pass through them 4. In several of those vegetables whilst green I have with my microscope plainly enough discovered these cells or pores filled with juices and by degrees sweating them out as I have also observed in green wood all those long microscopical pores which appear in charcoal perfectly empty of anything but air now though I have with great diligence endeavored to find whether there be any such thing in those microscopical pores of water pits as the valves in the heart veins and other passages of animals that open and give passage to the contained fluid juices one way and shut themselves and impede the passage of such liquors back again yet have I not either to been able to say anything positive in it though me thinks it seems very probable that nature has in these passages as well as in those of animal bodies very many appropriated instruments and contrivances whereby to bring her designs and end to pass which is not improbable but that some diligent observer if helped with better microscopes may in time detect and that this may be so seems with great probability to be argued from the strange phenomena of sensitive plants wherein nature seems to perform several animal actions with the same schematism or organization that is common to all vegetables as may appear by some no less instructive than curious observations that were made by diverse eminent members of the Royal Society on some of these kind of plants where of an account was delivered into them by the most ingenious and excellent physician doctor Clark which having that liberty granted me by that most illustrious society I have here on to a joined observations on the humble and sensible plants in M. Schiffen's garden in St. James Park made August the 9th 1661 present the Lord Bruncker Sir Robert Moray Dr. Wilkins Mr. Evelyn Dr. Henshaw and Dr. Clark There are four plants two of which are little shrub plants with a little short stock about an inch above the ground from whence or spread several sticky branches round straight and smooth in the distances between the sprouts but just under the sprouts there are two sharp thorny prickles broad in the letting on as in the bramble one just under the sprout the other on the opposite side of the branch the distances betwixt the sprouts are usually something more than an inch and many upon a branch according to its length and they grow so that if the lower sprout beyond the left side of the branch the next above is on the right and so to the end not sprouting by pairs at the end of each sprout are generally four sprigs two at the extremity and one on each side just under it at the first sprouting of these from the branch to the sprig where the leaves grow they are full of little short white hairs which wear off as the leaves grow and then they are smooth as the branch upon each of these sprigs are for the most part eleven pair of leaves neatly set into the uppermost part of the little sprig exactly one against another as it were in little articulations such as anatomists call anarthrosis where the round head of a bone is received into another fitted for its motion and standing very fitly to shut themselves in touch the pairs just above them closing somewhat upon them as in the shut sprig so is the little round pedunculus of this leaf fitted into a little cavity of the sprig visible to the eye in a sprig new plucked or in a sprig withered on the branch from which the leaves easily fall by touching the leaf being almost an oblong square and set into the pedunculus at one of the lower corners receive it from that not only a spine as I may call it which passing through the leaf divides it so length ways that the outer side is broader than the inner next to the sprig but little fibers passing obliquely towards the opposite broader side seem to make it here a little muscular and fitted to move the whole leaf which together with the whole sprig are set full with little short whitish hairs one of these plants whose branch seem to be older and more grown than the other only the tender sprouts of it after the leaves are shut fall and hang down of the other the whole branches fall to the ground if the sunshine very warm upon the first taking off the glass which I therefore call the humble plant the other two which do never fall nor do any of their branches flag and hang down shut not their leaves but upon somewhat a hard stroke the stalks seem to grow up from a root and appear more herbaceous they are round and smooth without any prickle the sprouts from them have several pairs of sprigs with much less leaves than the other on them and have on each sprig generally 17 pair upon touching any of the sprigs with leaves on all the leaves on that sprig contracting themselves by pairs joined their upper super fishies close together upon the dropping a drop of aqua Fortis on the sprig betwixt the leaves FF all the leaves above shut presently those below by pairs successively after and by the lower leaves of the other branches LL KK etc and so every pair successively with some little distance of time betwixt to the top of each sprig and so they continued shut all the time we were there but I returning the next day and several days since found all the leaves dilated again on two of the sprigs but from FF where the aqua Fortis had dropped upwards dead and withered but those below on the same sprig green and closing upon the touch and are so to this day August 14 with a pair of scissors as suddenly as it could be done one of the leaves BB was clipped off in the middle upon which that pair and the pair above closed presently after a little interval DD then EE and so the rest of the pairs to the bottom of the sprig and then the motion began in the lower pairs LL on the other sprigs and so shut them by pairs upwards though not with such distinct distances under a pretty large branch with its sprigs on there lying a large shell betwixt two and three inches below it there was rubbed on a strong scented oil after a little time all the leaves on that sprig were shut and so they continued all the time of our stay there but at my return the next day I found the position of the shell altered and the leaves expanded as before and closing upon the touch upon the application of the sun beams by a burning glass the more humble plant fell the other shut their leaves we could not so apply the smoke of sulfur as to have any visible effect from that at two or three times trial but on another trial the smoke touching the leaves it succeeded the humble plant fell upon taking off the glass where with it was covered cutting off one of the little sprouts two or three drops of liquor were thrust out of the part from whence that was cut very clear and polluted of a bright greenish color tasting at first a little bitter ish but after leaving a liquor ish like taste in my mouth since going two or three times when it was cold I took the glasses from the more humble plant and it did not fall as formally but shut its leaves only but coming afterwards when the sun shone very warm as soon as it was taken off it fell as before since I plucked off another sprig whose leaves were all shut and had been so sometime thinking to observe the liquor should come from that I had broken off but finding none though with pressing to come I as dexterously as I could pulled off one whose leaves were expanded and then had upon the shutting of the leaves a little of the mentioned liquor from the end of the sprig I had broken from the plant and this twice successively as often almost as I durst robbed the plant but my curiosity carrying me yet further I cut off one of the harder branches of the stronger plant and there came of the liquor both from that I had cut and that I had cut it from without pressure which made me think that the motion of this plant upon touching might be from this that there being a constant intercourse betwixt every part of this plant in its root either by a circulation of this liquor or a constant pressing of the subtler parts of it to every extremity of the plant upon every pressure from whatsoever it proceeds greater than that which keeps it up the subtle parts of this liquor a thrust downwards towards its articulations of the leaves where not having room presently to get into the sprig the little round pedunculus from whence the spine and those oblique fibers I mentioned rise being dilated the spine and fibers being continued from it must be contracted and shortened and so draw the leaf upwards to join with its fellow in the same condition with itself where being closed they are held together by the implications of the little whitish hair as well as by the still retreating liquor which distending the fibers that are continued lower to the branch and root shorten them above and when the liquor is so much forced from the sprout whose fibers are yet tender and not able to support themselves but by that tenseness which the liquor filling their interstices gives them the sprout hangs and flags but perhaps he that had the ability and leisure to give you the exact anatomy of this pretty plant to show you its fibers and visible canals through which this fine liquor circulated or is moved and had the faculty of better and more copiously expressing his observations and conceptions such a one would easily from the motion of this liquor solve all the phenomena and would not fear to affirm that it is no obscure sensation this plant half but I have said too much I humbly submit and I'm ready to stand corrected I have not yet made so full and satisfactory observations as I desire on this plant which seems to be a subject that will afford abundance of information but as far as I have had opportunity to examine it I have discovered with my microscope very curious structures and contrivances but designing much more accurate examinations and trials both with my microscope and otherwise as soon as the season will permit I shall not till then add anything of what I have already taken notice of but as far as I have yet observed I judge the motion of it to proceed from causes very differing from those by which gut strings or loot strings the beard of a wild oat or the beard of the seeds of geranium moscatum or musk grass and other kinds of cranes bill move themselves of which I shall add more in the subsequent observations on those bodies end of section 23 section 24 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 24 observation 19 of a plant growing in the blighted or yellow specs of damas grows leaves bramble leaves and some other kind of leaves I have for several years together in the months of June July August and September when any of the green leaves of roses begin to dry and grow yellow observed many of them especially the leaves of the old shrubs of damas grows is all bespect with yellow stains and the undersides just against them to have little yellow hillocks of a damas substance and several of them to have small black spots in the midst of those yellow ones which to the naked eye appeared no bigger than the point of a pin or the smallest black spot or tittle of ink one is able to make with a very sharp pointed pen examining these with a microscope I was able plainly to distinguish up and down the surface several small yellow knobs of a kind of yellowish red gummy substance out of which I perceived their sprung multitudes of little cases or black bodies like seed Cods and those of them that were quite without the hillock of gum disclose themselves to grow out of it with a small straw colored and transparent stem the witch seed and stem appeared very like those of common moss which I elsewhere describe but that they were abundantly less many hundreds of them being not able to equalize one single seed Cod of moss I have often doubted whether they were the seed Cods of some little plant or some kind of small buds or the eggs of some very small insect they appeared of a dark brownish red some almost quite black and of a figure much resembling the seed Cod of moss but their stocks on which they grew were of a very fine transparent substance almost like the stock of mold but that they seemed somewhat more yellow that which makes me to suppose them to be vegetables is for that I perceived many of those hillocks bear or destitute as if those bodies lay yet concealed as G in others of them they were just springing out of their gummy hillocks which all seem to shoot directly outwards as at A in others as at B I found them just gotten out with very little or no stock and the Cods of an indifferent size but in others as C I found them begin to have little short stocks or stems in others as D those stems were grown bigger and larger and in others as at E F H I K L etc those stems and Cods were grown a great deal bigger and the stocks were more bulky about the root and very much tapered towards the top as at F and L is most visible I did not find that any of them had any seed in them or that any of them were hollow but as they grew bigger and bigger I found those heads or Cods begin to turn their tops towards their roots in the same manner as I had observed that of moss to do so that in all likelihood nature did intend in that posture what she does in the like seed Cods of greater bulk that is that the seed when ripe should be shaken out and dispersed at the end of it as we find in Columbine Cods and the like. The whole oval O O O O in the second figure of the twelve scheme represents a small part of a rose leaf about the little oval in the hillock C marked with the figure X in which I have not particularly observed all the other forms of the surface of the rose leaf as being little to my present purpose. Now if these Cods have a seed in them so proportion to the Cod as though of pinks and carnations and Columbines and the like, how unimaginably small must each of those seeds necessarily be? For the whole length of one of the largest of those Cods was not one five hundredths of the Cod with part of an inch some not above one one thousandth and therefore certainly very many thousand of them would be unable to make a bulk that should be visible to the naked eye. And if each of these contain the rudiments of a young plant of the same kind what must we say of the pores and constituent parts of that? The generation of this plant seems in part ascribable to a kind of mildew or blight whereby the parts of the leaves grow scabby or putrified as it were so as that the moisture breaks out in little scabs or spots which as I said before look like little knobs of a red gum as substance. From this putrified scab breaks out this little vegetable which may be somewhat like a mold or moss and may have its equivocal generation much after the same manner as I have supposed moss or mold to have and to be a more simple and uncompounded kind of vegetation which is set a moving by the putrefactive and fermentative heat joined with that of the ambient aerial when by the putrefaction and decay of some other parts of the vegetable that for a while stayed its progress. It is unfettered and left at liberty to move in its former course but by reason of its regulators moves and acts after quite another manner than it did when a coagent in the more compounded machine of the more perfect vegetable. And from this very same principle I imagine the mistletoe of oaks, thorns, apple trees, and other trees to have its original. Its seldom or never growing on any of those trees till they begin to wax to crepid and decay with age and are pestered with many other infirmities. Hither also may be referred those multitudes and varieties of mushrooms such as that called juiciers, all sorts of gray and green mosses, etc., which infest all kind of trees, shrubs, and the like especially when they come to any bigness. And this we see to be very much the method of nature throughout its operations. Putrefactive vegetables very often producing a vegetable of a much less compounded nature and of a much inferior tribe and putrefactive animal substances degenerating into some kind of animal production of a much inferior rank and of a more simple nature. Thus we find the humors and substances of the body upon putrefaction to produce strange kinds of moving vermin. The putrefaction of the slimes and juices of the stomach and guts produce worms almost like earthworms. The wheels and children's hands produce a little worm called a wheel worm. The blood and milk and other humors produce other kinds of worms at least if we may believe what is delivered to us by very famous authors. Though I confess I have not yet been able to discover such myself. And whereas it may seem strange that vinegar, meal, musty casks, etc., are observed to breed their differing kinds of insects or living creatures whereas they, being vegetable substances, seem to be of an inferior kind and so unable to produce a creature more noble or of a more compounded nature than they themselves are of. And so without some concurrent seminal principle may be thought utterly unfit for such an operation. I must add that we cannot presently positively say there are no animal substances either immediately as by the soil or fattening of the plant from whence they sprung or more immediately by the real mixture or composition of such substances joined with them. Or perchance some kind of insect in such places where such kind of putrifying or fermenting bodies are may, by a certain instinct of nature, eject some sort of seminal principle which cooperating with various kinds of putrifying substances may produce various kinds of insects or animate bodies. For we find in most sorts of those lower degrees of animate bodies that the putrifying substances on which these eggs, seeds, or seminal principles are cast by the insect become, as it were, the matrices or wombs that can do very much to their generation and may perchance also to their variation and alteration much after the same manner. As by strange and unnatural copulations several new kinds of animals are produced as mules and the like which are usually called monstrous because a little unusual. Though many of them have all their principle parts as perfectly shaped and adapted for their peculiar uses as any of the most perfect animals. If therefore the putrifying body on which any kind of seminal or vital principle chances to be cast becomes somewhat more than merely a nursing and fostering helper in the generation and production of any kind of animate body. The more near it approaches the true nature of a womb the more power will it have on the bi-blow it encloses. But of this somewhat more in the description of the water-nat perhaps some more accurate inquiries and observations about these matters might bring the question to some certainty which would be of no small concern in natural philosophy. But that putrifying animal substances may produce animals of an inferior kind I see not any so very great a difficulty but that one may without much absurdity admit for as there may be multitudes of contrivances that go to the making up of one complete animate body so that some of those co-agitors in the perfect existence and life of it may be vitiated and the life of the whole destroyed and yet several of the constituting contrivances remain entire. I cannot think it beyond imagination or possibility no more than that alike accidental process as I have elsewhere hinted may also be supposed to explicate the method of nature in the metamorphosis of plants. And though the difference between a plant and an animal be very great yet I have not either to met with any so cogent an argument as to make me positive in affirming these two to be altogether heterogeneous and of quite differing kinds of nature. And besides as there are many zoophytes and sensitive plants diverse of which I have seen which are of a middle nature and seem to be nature's transition from one degree to another which may be observed in all her other passages wherein she is very seldom observed to leap from one step to another. So have we in some authors instances of plants turning into animals and animals into plants and the like and some other very strange because unheeded proceedings of nature something of which kind may be met with in the description of the water nat though it be not altogether so direct to the present purpose. But to refer this discourse of animals to their proper places I shall add that though one should suppose or it should be proved by observations that several of these kinds of plants are accidentally produced by a casual putrefaction. I see not any great reason to question but that not withstanding its own production was as to where casual yet it may germinate and produce seed and by it propagate its own that is a new species. For we do not know but that the omnipotent and all wise creator might as directly design the structure of such a vegetable or such an animal to be produced out of such or such a putrefaction or change of this or that body towards the constitution or structure of which he knew it necessary or thought it fit to make it an ingredient as that the digestion or moderate heating of an egg either by the female or the sun or the heat of the fire or the like should produce this or that bird or that putrefactive and warm steam should out of the blowings as they call them that is the eggs of a fly produce a living maggot and that by degrees be turned into an aurelia and that by a longer and a proportioned heat be transmuted into a fly nor need we therefore to suppose it the more imperfect in its kind than the more compounded vegetable or animal of which it is a part for he might as completely furnish it with all kinds of contrivances necessary for its own existence and the propagation of its own species and yet make it a part of a more compounded body as a clockmaker might make a set of chimes to be a part of a clock and yet when the watch part or striking part are taken away and the hindrances of its motion removed this chiming part may go as accurately and strike its tune as exactly as if it were still a part of the compounded automaton. So, though the original cause or seminal principle from which this minute plant on rose leaves did spring were before the corruption caused by the mildew a component part of the leaf on which it grew and did serve as a coagent in the production and constitution of it yet might it be so consummate as to produce a seed which might have a power of propagating the same species. The works of the creator seeming of such an excellency that though they are unable to help to the perfecting of the more compounded existence of the greater planter animal they may have not withstanding an ability of acting singly upon their own internal principle so as to produce a vegetable body though of a less compounded nature and to proceed so far in the method of other vegetables as to bear flowers and seeds which may be capable of propagating the like so that the little cases which appear to grow on the top of the slender stalks may for odd I know though I should suppose them to spring from the perverting of the usual course of the parent vegetable contain a seed which being scattered on other leaves of the same plant may produce a plant of much the same kind. Nor are damask rose leaves the only leaves that produce these kinds of vegetable sproutings for I have observed them also in several other kinds of rose leaves and on the leaves of several sorts of briars and on bramble leaves they are often times to be found in very great clusters so that I have found in one cluster three four or five hundred of them making a very conspicuous black spot or scab on the backside of the leaf. End of section 24 Section 25 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 Search Morgan Scorpion on YouTube to find my YouTube channel. Micrographia by Robert Hook Section 25 Observation 20 of Blue Mold and of the first principles of vegetation arising from putrefaction The blue and white and several kinds of hairy moldy spots which are observable upon diverse kinds of putrefied bodies, whether animal substances or vegetable such as the skin, raw or dressed, flesh, blood, humours, milk, green cheese etc. Are all of them nothing else but several kinds of small and variously figured mushrooms which from convenient materials in those putrefying bodies are by the concurrent heat of the air excited to a certain kind of vegetation which will not be unworthy of our more serious speculation and examination as I shall buy and buy show. First I must premise a short description of this specimen which I have added of this tribe in the first figure of the twelfth scheme, which is nothing else but the appearance of a small white spot of hairy mold, multitude of which I found to bespeak and whiten over the red covers of a small book, which it seems were of sheepskin, that being more apt to gather mold even in a dry and clean room than other leathers. These spots appeared, through a good microscope, to be a very pretty shaped vegetative body, which, from almost the same part of the leather, shot out multitudes of small, long, cylindrical and transparent stalks, not exactly straight, but a little bended with the weight of a round and white knob that grew on the top of each of them. Many of these knobs I observed to be very round, and of a smooth surface, such as A, A etc., others smooth likewise, but a little oblong, as B, several of them a little broken, or cloven with chops at the top, as C, others flitted as twer, or flown all to pieces, as D. The whole substance of these pretty bodies was of a very tender constitution, much like the substance of the softer kind of common white mushrooms, for by touching them with a pin I found them to be bruised and torn. They seemed each of them to have a distinct root of their own, for though they grew near together in a cluster, yet I could perceive each stem to rise out of a distinct part, or paw of the leather. Some of these were small and short, as seeming to have been but newly sprung up, of these the balls were for the most part round, others were bigger and taller, as being perhaps of a longer growth, and of these, for the most part, the heads were broken, and some much wasted as E. What these heads contained I could not perceive, whether they were knobs and flowers, or seed cases, I am not able to say, but they seemed most likely to be of the same nature with those that grow on mushrooms, which they did, some of them, not a little resemble. Both their smell and taste, which are active enough to make a sensible impression upon these organs, are unpleasant and noisome. I could not find that they would so quickly be destroyed by the actual flame of a candle, as at first sight of them I conceived they would be, but they remained entire after I had passed that part of the leather on which they struck three or four times through the flame of a candle, so that it seems they are not very apt to take fire, no more than the common white mushrooms are when they are sappy. There are a multitude of other shapes, of which these microscopical mushrooms are figured, which would have been a very long work to have described, and would not have suited so well with my design in these treaties. Only, amongst the rest, I must not forget to take notice of one that was a little like to, or resembled, a sponge, consisting of a multitude of little ramifications, almost as that body does, which indeed seems to be a kind of water mushroom, of a very pretty texture, as I elsewhere manifest. And a second, which I must not omit, because often mingled, and nearer joining to these I have described, and this appeared much like a thicket of bushes, or brambles, very much branched, and extended some of them to a great length in proportion to their diameter, like creeping brambles. The manner of the growth and formation of this kind of vegetable is the third head of inquiry, which, had I time, I should follow. The figure and method of generation in this concrete, seeming to me, next after the inquiry into the formation, figuration, or crystallization of salts, to be the most simple, plain, and easy. And it seems to be a medium through which he must necessarily pass, that would with any likelihood investigate the former in formats of vegetables. For as I think that he shall find it a very difficult task, who undertakes to discover the form of saline crystallizations, without the consideration and prescience of the nature and reason of a globular form, and as difficult to explicate this configuration of mushrooms, without the previous consideration of the form of salts. So will the inquiry into the forms of vegetables be no less, if not much more difficult, without the foreknowledge of the forms of mushrooms, these several inquiries having no less dependence on one upon another than any select number of propositions in mathematical elements may be made to have. Nor do I imagine that the skips from the one to another will be found very great, if beginning from fluidity, or body without any form, we descend gradually till we arrive at the highest form of a brute animal's soul, making the steps or foundations of our inquiry, fluidity, orbiculation, fixation, angularization, or crystallization, germination, or abolition, vegetation, plant animation, animation, sensation, imagination. Now that we may the better proceed in our inquiry, it will be requisite to consider. First, that the mould and mushrooms require no seminal property, but that the former may be produced at any time from any kind of putrefying animal, or vegetable substance, as flesh, etc, kept moist and warm, and the latter, if what Matthewless relates be true, of making them by art are as much within our command of which matter take the epitome which Mr Parkinson has delivered in his herbal, in his chapter of mushrooms, because I have not Matthewless now by me. Unto these mushrooms, saith he, may also be adjoined those which are made of art, whereof Matthewless makes mention, that grow naturally among certain stones in Naples, and that the stones being digged up and carried to Rome, and other places where they set them in their wine cellars, covering them with a little earth, and sprinkling a little warm water thereon, would within four days produce mushrooms fit to be eaten, at what time one will. As also that mushrooms may be made to grow at the foot of a wild poplar tree, within four days after, warm water wherein some leaves have been dissolved shall be poured into the root, which must be slit, and the stalk above ground. Next, that as mushrooms may be generated without seed, so does it not appear that they have any such thing as seed in any part of them, for having considered several kinds of them, I could never find anything in them that I could with any probability guess to be the seed of it, so that it does not as yet appear, that I know of, that mushrooms may be generated from a seed, but they rather seem to depend merely upon a convenient constitution of the matter out of which they are made, and a concurrence of either natural or artificial heat. Thirdly, that by several bodies, as salts and metals both in water and in the air, and by several kinds of sublimations in the air, actuated and guided with a congruous heat, there may be produced several kinds of bodies as curiously, if not of a more composed figure, several kinds of rising or ebulliating figures seem to manifest, as witness the shooting in the rectification of spirits of urine, heart-horn, blood, etc., witness also the curious branches of evaporated dissolutions, some of them against the sides of the containing jar, others standing up or growing an end out of the bottom, of which I have taken notice of a very great variety. But above all the rest is a very pretty kind of germination which is afforded us in the silver tree, the manner of making which with mercury and silver is well known to the chemists, of which there is an evolution or germination, very much like this of mushrooms, if I have been rightly informed of it. Fourthly, I have very often taken notice of, and also observed with a microscope, certain excrescences or ebullitions in the snuff of a candle, which partly from the sticking of the smoky particles, as they are carried upwards by the current of the rarefied air and flame, and partly also from a kind of germination or ebullition of some actuated, unctuous parts which creep along and filter through some small string of the wick, are formed into pretty round and uniform heads, very much resembling the form of hooded mushrooms, which, being by any means exposed to the fresh air, or that air which encompasses the flame, they are presently licked up and devoured by it and vanish. The reason of which phenomenon seems to me to be no other than this, that when a convenient thread of the wick is so bent out by the sides of the snuff that are about half an inch or more removed about the bottom, or lowest part of the flame, and that this part be wholly included in the flame, the oil, for the reason of filtration, which I have elsewhere rendered, being continually driven up, the snuff is driven likewise into this ragged, bended end, and this being removed a good distance, as half an inch or more, above the bottom of the flame, the parts of the air that passes by it are already almost satiated with the dissolution of the boiling, unctuous steam that issued out below, and therefore are not only glutted, that is, can dissolve no more than what they are already acting upon, but they carry up with them abundance of unctuous and sooty particles, which meeting with that rag of the wick that is plentifully filled with oil and only spends it as fast as it evaporates, and not at all by dissolution or burning, by means of these steamy parts of the filtrated oil issuing out at the sides of this rag, and being enclosed with an air that is already satiated and cannot prey upon them nor burn them, the ascending sooty particles are stayed about it and fixed. So is that about the end of the rag or filament of the snuff, whence the greatest part of the steam's issue, there is conglobated or fixed around and pretty uniform cap, much resembling the head of a mushroom, which, if it be of any great bigness, you may observe that its underside will be bigger than that which is above the rag or stem of it. For the oil that is brought into it by filtration, being by the bulk of the cap a little sheltered from the heat of the flame, does by that means issue as much out beneath from the stalk or downwards as it does upwards, and by reason of the great access of the adventitious smoke from beneath, it increases most that way, that this may be the true reason of this phenomenon, I could produce many arguments and experiments to make it probable. First, that the filtration carries the oil to the top of the wick, at least as high as these rags, is visible to one that will observe the snuff of a burning candle with a microscope, where he may see an evolution or bubbling of the oil as high as the snuff looks black. Next, that it does steam away more than burn, I could tell you of the dim burning of a candle, the longer the snuff be which arises from the abundance of vapours out of the higher parts of it. And thirdly, that in the middle of the flame of the candle, near the top of the snuff, the fire or dissolving principle is nothing near so strong as near the bottom and out edges of the flame, which may be observed by the burning asunder of a thread, that will first break in those parts that the edges of the flame touch and not in the middle. And I could add several observables that I have taken notice of in the flame of a lamp actuated with bellows, and very many others that confirm me in my opinion, but that it is not so much to my present purpose, which is only to consider this concrete in the snuff of a candle, so far as it has any resemblance of a mushroom, to the consideration of which that I may return, I say, we may also observe. In the fifth place, that the droppings or trillings of lapidescent waters in vaults underground seem to constitute a kind of petrified body, formed almost like some kind of mushrooms inverted, in so much that I have seen some knobbed a little at the lower end, though for the most part, indeed, they are otherwise shaped and tapered towards the end, the generation of which seems to be from no other reason than this. That the water, by soaking through the earth and lime, for I guess that substance to add much to its petrifying quality, does so impregnate itself with stony particles, that hanging in drops in the roof of the vault, by reason that the soaking of the water is but slow, it becomes exposed to the air, and thereby the outward part of the drop by degrees grows hard, by reason that the water gradually evaporating the stony particles near the outsides of the drop begin to touch, and by degrees to dry and grow closer together, and at length constitute a crust or shell about the drop, and this soaking by degrees, being more and more supplied, the drop grows longer and longer, and the sides harden thicker and thicker into a quill or cane, and at length that hollow or pith becomes almost stopped up and solid, afterwards the soaking of the petrifying water finding no longer a passage through the middle bursts out and trickles down the outside, and as the water evaporates, leaves new super induced shells, which more and more swell the bulk of those icicles, and because of the great supply from the vault of petrifying water, those bodies grow bigger and bigger next to the vault, and taper or sharpen towards the point, for the access from the arch of the vault being but very slow, and consequently the water being spread very thinly over the surface of the icicle, the water begins to settle before it can reach to the bottom, or corner end of it, whence if you break one of these you would almost imagine it a stick of wood petrified, it having so prettier resemblance of pith and grain, and if you look on the outside of a piece, or of one hole, you would think no less, both from its vegetable roundness and tapering form, but whereas all vegetables are observed to shoot and grow perpendicularly upwards, this does shoot or prepend directly downwards. By which last observables, we see that there may be a very pretty body shaped and concreted by mechanical principles, without the least show or probability of any other seminal formatrix, and since we find that the great reason of the phenomenon of this pretty petrification are to be reduced from the gravity of a fluid and pretty volatile body impregnated with stony particles, why may not the phenomena of evolution or germination be in part possibly enough deduced from the levity of an impregnated liquor, which therefore perpendicularly ascending by degrees evaporates and leaves the more solid and fixed parts behind in the form of a mushroom, which is yet further diversified and specificated by the forms of the parts that impregnated the liquor, and compose or help to constitute the mushroom. That the aforementioned figures of growing salts and the silver tree are from this principle I could very easily manifest, but that I have not now a convenient opportunity of following it, nor have I made a sufficient number of experiments and observations to propound, explicate and prove so useful a theory as this of mushrooms. For though the contrary principle to that of petrified icicles may be in part a cause, yet I cannot but think that there is somewhat a more complicated cause, though yet mechanical and possible to be explained. We therefore have further to inquire of it what makes it to be such a liquor, and to ascend, whether the heat of the sun and air, or whether that fermentation and putrefaction, or both together, as also whether there be not a third or fourth, whether a saline principle be not a considerable agent in this business also as well as heat, whether also a fixation, precipitation or settling of certain parts out of the aerial minstrum may not be also a considerable coagitor in the business. Since we find that many pretty beards, sterii of the particles of silver may be precipitated upon a piece of brass, put into a solution of silver, very much diluted with fair water, which look not unlike a kind of mould or whore upon that piece of metal, and the whore frost looks like a kind of mould, and whether there may not be several others that do concur to the production of a mushroom, having not yet had sufficient time to prosecute according to my desires, I must refer this to a better opportunity of my own, or leave and recommend it to the more diligent inquiry and examination of such as can be masters both of leisure and conveniences for such an inquiry. And in the meantime, I must conclude that as far as I have been able to look into the nature of this primary kind of life and vegetation, I cannot find the least probable argument to persuade me there is any other concurrent cause than such as is purely mechanical, and that the effects or productions are as necessary upon the concurrence of those causes as that a ship, when the sails are hoist up, and the rudder is set to such a position, should, when the wind blows, be moved in such a way or course to that or to other place, or as that the bruised watch, which I mention in the description of Moss, should, when those parts which hindered its motion were fallen away, begin to move, but after quite another manner than it did before. End of Section 25 Section 26 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 Look me up on YouTube if you like ghost and horror stories. Micrographia by Robert Hook Section 26 Observation 21 of Moss and several other small vegetative substances. Moss is a plant that the wisest of kings thought neither unworthy his speculation nor his pen, and though amongst plants it be in bulk one of the smallest, yet it is not the least considerable. For as to its shape, it may compare for the beauty of it with any plant that grows, and bears a much bigger breadth. It has a root almost like a seedy parsnip, furnished with small strings and suckers, which are all of them finely branched, like those of the roots of much bigger vegetables. Out of this springs the stem or body of the plant, which is somewhat quadrangular, rather than cylindrical, most curiously fluted or lining with small creases which run for the most part parallel of the whole stem. On the sides of this are close and thick set, a multitude of fair, large, well-shaped leaves, some of them of a rounder, others of a longer shape, according as they are younger or older when plucked. As I guess by this, that those plants that had the stalks growing from the top of them had their leaves of a much longer shape, all the surface of each side of which is curiously covered with the multitude of little oblong-transbound bodies, in the manner as you see it expressed in the leaf B, in the thirteenth scheme. This plant, when young and springing up, does much resemble a house-leek, having thick leaves almost like that, and seems to be somewhat akin to it in other particulars. Also, from the top of the leaves, there shoots out a small white and transparent hair or thorn. This stem, in time, come to shoot out into a long round and even stalk, which by cutting transversely, when dry, I manifestly found to be a stiff, hard and hollow cane or reed, without any kind of knot or stop from its bottom, where the leaves encompassed it, to the top, on which there grows a large seed-case, a. covered with a thin and more whitish skin, b. terminated in a long thorny top, which at first covers all the case, and by degrees, as that swells, the skin cleaves, and at length falls off, with its thorny top and all, which is a part of it, and leaves the seed-case to ripen, and by degrees, to shatter out its seed at a place underneath this cap, b. which, before the seed is ripe, appears like a flat, bowed button, without any hole in the middle, but as it ripens, the button grows bigger, and a hole appears in the middle of it, e. out of which, in all probability, the seed falls, for as it ripens by a provision of nature, that end of this case turns downwards after the same manner as the ears of wheat and barley usually do, and opening several of these dry red cases, f, I found them to be quite hollow, without anything at all in them, whereas when I cut them asunder with a sharp pen-knife-grain green, I found in the middle of this great case, another smaller round case, between which, too, the interstices were filled with multitudes of stringy fibres, which seemed to suspend the lesser case in the middle of the other, which, as far as I was able to discern, seemed full of exceeding small white seeds, much like the seed-bag in the knop of a carnation, after the flowers have been two or three days, or a week, fallen off, but this I could not so perfectly discern, and therefore, cannot positively affirm it. After the seed was fallen away, I found both the case, stalk, and plant, all grow red and wither, and from other parts of the root continually to spring new branches or slips, which by degrees increased, and grew as big as the former, seeded, ripened, shattered, and withered. I could not find that it observed any particular seasons for these several kinds of growth, but rather found it to be springing, mature, ripe, seedy, and withered at all times of the year, but I found it most to flourish and increase in warm and moist weather. It gathers its nourishments, for the most part, out of some lapidescent or other substance corrupted or changed from its former texture or substantial form, for I have found it to grow on the rotten parts of stone, of bricks, of wood, of bones, of leather, etc. It oft grows on the barks of several trees, spreading itself, sometimes from the ground upwards, and sometimes from some chink or cleft of the bark of the tree, which has some putrified substance in it, but this seems of a distinct kind from that which I observed to grow on putrified inanimate bodies and rotten earth. There are also great varieties of other kinds of mosses, which grow on trees, and several other plants, of which I shall here make no mention, know of the moss growing on the skull of a dead man, which much resembles that of trees. Whether this plant does sometimes originally spring or rise out of corruption without any disseminated seed, I have not yet made trials enough to be very much, either positive or negative. For as it seems very hard to conceive how the seed should be generally dispersed into all parts where there is a corruption begun, unless we may rationally suppose that this seed being so exceeding small and consequently exceeding light, is thereby taken up and carried to and fro in the air into every place, and by the falling drops of rain is washed down out of it, and so dispersed into all places, and there only takes root and propagates, where it finds a convenient soil or matrix for it to thrive on. So if we will have it to proceed from corruption, it is not less difficult to conceive. First, how the corruption of any vegetable, much less of any stone or brick, should be the parent of so curiously figured and so perfect a plant as this is. But here indeed I cannot but add that it seems rather to be a product of the rain in those bodies where it is stayed than of the very bodies themselves, since I have found it growing on marble and flint. But always the microscope, if not the naked eye, would discover some little hole of dirt in which it was rooted. Next, how the corruption of each of those exceedingly differing bodies should all conspire to the production of the same plant, that is, that stones, bricks, wood or vegetable substances and bones, leather, horns or animate substances, unless we may with some plausibility say that air and water are the co-urgitors, or menstruums, all kinds of putrefactions, and that thereby the bodies, though whilst they retained their substantial forms, were of exceeding differing natures yet, since they are dissolved and mixed into another, that they may be very homogenous, they being almost resolved again into air, water and earth, retaining perhaps one part of their vegetative faculty yet entire, which meeting with congruous assistance, such as the heat of the air and the fluidity of the water, and such like co-urgitors and conveniences, acquires a certain vegetation for a time, wholly differing perhaps from that kind of vegetation it had before. To explain my meaning a little better by a gross similitude. Suppose a curious piece of clockwork that had had several motions and contrivances in it, which, when in order, would all have moved in their designed methods and periods. We will further suppose, by some means, that this clock becomes to be broken, bruised or otherwise disordered, so that several parts of it being dislocated, are impeded, and so stand still, and not only hinder its own progressive motion, and produce not the effect which they were designed for, but because the other parts also have a dependence upon them, put a stop to their motion likewise, and so the whole instrument becomes unserviceable, and not fit for any use. This instrument afterwards, by some shaking and tumbling, and throwing up and down, comes to have several of its parts shaken out, and several of its curious motions, and contrivances, and particles all fallen asunder. Here a pin falls out, and there a pillar, and here a wheel, and there a hammer, and a spring, and the like, and among the rest away falls those parts also which were bruised and disordered, and had all this while impeded the motion of the rest. Here upon several of those other motions that yet remain, whole springs were not quite run down, being now at liberty begin each of them to move, thus or thus, but quite after another method than before, there being many regulating parts, and the like, fallen away, and lost. Upon this, the owner, who chances to hear and observe some of these effects, being ignorant of the watchmaker's art, wonders what is betide his clock, and presently imagines that some artist has been at work, and has set his clock in order, and made a new kind of instrument of it. But upon examining circumstances, he finds there was no such matter, but that the casual slipping out of a pin had made several parts of his clock fall to pieces, and that thereby the obstacle that all this while hindered his clock, together with other useful parts were fallen out, and so his clock was set at liberty. And upon winding up those springs again when run down, he finds his clock to go, but quite after another manner than it was want here to fall. And thus it may be, perhaps, in the business of moss, and mould, and mushrooms, and several other spontaneous kinds of vegetations, which may be caused by a vegetative principle, which was a coagitor to the life and growth of the greater vegetable, and was by the destroying of the life of it, stopped and impeded in performing its office. Afterwards, upon a further corruption of several parts that had all the while impeded it, the heat of the sun winding it up, as it were, the spring, sends it again into a vegetative motion, and this being single and not at all regulated as it was before, when a part of that greater machine, the pristine vegetable, is moved after quite a differing manner, and produces effects very differing from those it did before. But this I propound only as a conjecture, not that I am more inclined to this hypothesis than the seminal, which upon good reason I guess to be mechanical also as I may elsewhere more fully show, but because I may, by this, hint a possible way how this appearance may be solved, supposing we should be driven to confess from certain experiments and observations made, that such or such vegetables were produced out of the corruption of another, without any concurrent seminal principle, as I have given some reason to suppose in the description of a microscopical mushroom, without derogating at all from the infinite wisdom of the creator. For this accidental production, as I may call it, does manifest as much, if not very much more, of the excellency of his contrivance as anything in the more perfect vegetative bodies of the world, even as the accidental motion of the automaton does make the owner see that there was much more contrivance in it than at first he imagined. But of this I have added more in the description of mould, and the vegetables on rose leaves, etc., those being much more likely to have their original from such a cause than this, which I have here described, in the thirteenth scheme, which indeed I cannot conceive otherwise of, then as of a most perfect vegetable, wanting nothing of the perfections of the most conspicuous and vastest vegetables of the world, and to be of a rank so high, as that it may very properly be reckoned with the tall cedar of Lebanon, as that kingly botanist has done. We know there may be as much curiosity of contrivance, and excellency of form in a very small pocket-clock, that takes not up an inch square of room, as there may be in a church-clock that fills a whole room, and I know not whether all the contrivances and mechanisms requisite to a perfect vegetable, may not be crowded into an exceedingly less room than this of moss. As I have heard of a striking watch so small that it served for a pendant in a lady's ear, and I have already given you the description of a plant growing on rose-leaves that is abundantly smaller than moss, in so much that near a thousand of them would hardly make the bigness of one single plant of moss. And by comparing the bulk of moss with the bulk of the biggest kind of vegetable we meet within story, of which kind we find in some hotter climates, as Guinea and Brazil, the stalk or body of some trees to be twenty foot in diameter, whereas the body or stem of moss, for the most part, is not above one sixtieth part of an inch, we shall find that the bulk of the one will exceed the bulk of the other, no less than two million nine hundred and eighty-five thousand nine hundred and eighty-four millions, or two nine eight five nine eight four, oh oh oh oh oh oh. And supposing the production on a rose-leaf to be a plant, we shall have of those Indian plants to exceed a production of the same vegetable kingdom no less than a thousand times the former number. So prodigiously various are the works of the creator, and so all sufficient is he to perform what to man would seem impossible, they being both alike easy to him, even as one day and a thousand years are to him as one and the same time. I have taken notice of such an infinite variety of those smaller kinds of vegetations, that should I have described every one of them, they would almost have filled a volume, and proved big enough to have made a new herbal. Such multitudes are they to be found in moist hot weather, especially in the summertime, on all kind of putrefying substances, which, whether they do more properly belong to the classes of mushrooms or moles or mosses, I shall not now dispute. There being some that seem more properly of one kind, others of another, their colours and magnitudes being as much differing as their figures and substances. Nay, I have observed that putting fair water, whether rain water or pump water or made you or snow water it was almost all one, I have often observed I say that this water would, with a little standing, tarnish and cover all about the sides of the glass that lay under water with a lovely green. But though I have often endeavoured to discover with my microscope whether this green were like moss or long striped seaweed or any other peculiar form, yet so ill and imperfect are our microscopes that I could not certainly discriminate any. Growing trees also, and any kinds of woods, stones, bones, etc., that have been long exposed to the air and rain, will be all over covered with a greenish scurff, which will very much foul and green any kind of clothes that are rubbed against it. Viewing this, I could not certainly perceive in many parts of it any determinate form, though in many I could perceive a bed, as twer, of young moss. But in other parts it looked almost like green bushes, and very confused, but always of whatever irregular figures the parts appeared of, they were always green, and seemed to be either some vegetable, or to have some vegetating principle. End of section 26 Section 27 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 Look for me on YouTube if you like ghost and horror stories. Micrographia by Robert Hook. Section 27 Observation 22 of common sponges and several other spongy fibrous bodies. A sponge is commonly reckoned among the zoophytes, or plant animals, and the texture of it, which the microscope discovers, seem to confirm it, for it is of a form where I have never observed any other vegetable. And indeed it seems impossible that any should be of it, for it consists of an infinite number of small, short fibres, or nervous parts, much of the same bigness, curiously jointed or context together in the form of a net, as is more plainly manifest by the little draft which I have added in the third figure of the ninth scheme of a piece of it, which you may perceive represents a confused heap of the fibres' parts curiously jointed and implicated. The joints are, for the most part, where three fibres only meet, for I have very seldom met with any that had four. At these joints there is no one of the three that seems to be the stock whereon the other grow, but each of the fibres are, for the most part, of an equal bigness, and seem each of them to have an equal share in the joint. The fibres are all of them much about the same bigness, not smaller towards the top of the sponge, and bigger nearer the bottom or root, as is usual in plants, the length of each between the joints is very irregular and different, the distance between some two joints being ten or twelve times more than between some others. Nor are the joints regular and of an equitriagonal figure, but for the most part the three fibres so meet that they compose three angles very differing all of them from one another. The meshes likewise and holes of this reticulated body are not less various and irregular, some bilateral, others trilateral and quadrilateral figures. Nay, I have observed some meshes to have five, six, seven, eight or nine sides, and some to have only one, so exceeding various is the loosest natural eye in this body. As to the outward appearance of this reticative body, they are so usual everywhere that I need not describe them. Consisting of a soft and porous substance representing a lock, sometimes a fleece of wool, but it has besides these small microscopical pores which lie between the fibres, a multitude of round pores or holes which, from the top of it, pierce into the body, and sometimes go quite through to the bottom. I have observed many of these sponges to have included likewise in the midst of their fibrous contextures pretty large, friable stones, which must either have been enclosed whilst this vegetable was in formation or generated in those places after it was perfectly shaped. The latter of which seems the more improbable, because I did not find that any of these stony substances were perforated with the fibres of the sponge. I have never seen nor been informed of the true manner of the growing of sponges on the rock, whether they are found to increase from little to great like vegetables, that is, part after part, or like animals, all parts equally growing together, or whether they be matrices or feedbanks of any kind of fishes or some kind of watery insect, or whether they are at any times more soft and tender or of another nature and texture, which things, if I knew how, I should much desire to be informed of. But from a cursory view that I had first made with my microscope and some other trials, I supposed it to be some animal substance cast out and fastened upon the rocks in the form of a froth or conjuries of bubbles, like that which I have often observed on rosemary and other plants, wherein is included a little insect, that all the little films which divide these bubbles one from another, did presently, almost after the substance began to grow a little harder, break, and leave only the thread behind, which might be, as it were, the angle or thread between the bubbles, that the great holes or pores observable in these sponges were made by the eruption of the included heterogenous substance, whether air or some other body, for many other fluid bodies will do the same thing, which breaking out of the lesser were collected into very large bubbles, and so might make their way out of the sponge, and in their passage might leave around cavity, and if it were large, might carry up with it the adjacent bubbles which may be perceived at the outside of the sponge, if it be first thoroughly wetted and suffered to plump itself into its natural form, or be then run dry and suffered to expand itself again, which it will freely do whilst moist, for when it has thus plumped itself into its natural shape and dimensions, it is obvious enough that the mouths of the larger holes have a kind of lip or rising round about them, but the other smaller pores have little or none. It may further be found that each of these great pores has many other small pores below that are united unto it, and help to constitute it, almost like so many rivulets or small streams that contribute to the maintenance of a large river. Nor from this hypothesis would it have been difficult to explicate how those little branches of coral, small stones, shells, and the like, come to be included by these frothy bodies, but this indeed was but a conjecture, and upon a more accurate enquiry into the form of it with the microscope, it seems not to be the true origin of them, for whereas sponges have only three arms which join together at each knot, if they had been generated from bubbles, they must have had four. But that they are animal substances, the chemical examination of them seems to manifest, they affording a volatile salt and spirit, like heart's horn, as does also their great strength and toughness, and their smell when burned in the fire or a candle, which has a kind of fleshy scent, not much unlike to hair. And having since examined several authors concerning them, among others, I find this account given by Bolognus in the eleventh chapter of his second book. But well, Eminus Nauseam Exquitet, Continental Artemis Cavernis, Cross Inanis Insecis, and Lotus Spongius Curnimus, Poutris Pulmonis, Modo Nigrae, Conspicunto, Verum Quai in Sublime Acquai, Nasconto, Molto Magus Opaca Nigradine, Sufficei Subt, Veveri Quidem Spongius Adherendo Aristoteles Quenset, Absolute Verum Minime, Sensum Quai Alacum Habere, Quodidificilime Abstrahanto, Naesai Clanculum Agato, Adquai, Ad Avulsoris Acasum Ita Contrahanto, Ud Eus Evelere Dificilisit, Quodidem Etiam Facuunt Quoties Flatos Tempestates Quai Urgant, Puto Artem Ilis, Suprediximus Cavernis, Adquai Meatibus, Latiobus Tancram Intestines, Ud Interaneus Uti, Quiterum, Parse Acquai Spongiae, Caltibus Adherent est Tancram Folii Petioles, Incipid. Quodinde in Latitudinum, Diffusum Capitis Globum Facit, Recentibus Nihil est Fistulosum, Heisit Tancre, Tancram Radicibus, Superni Onnes Popemodum Meaters Concreti Latent, Inferne Vero Quatene Adquainai Patent, Percours Eas Sugere Existimarmus, From which description they seem to be a kind of plant animal that adheres to a rock, and these small fibres or threads, which we have described, seem to have been the vessels which, it is very probable, were very much bigger whilst the interstitiae were filled, as he affirms, with a mucous, pulpy or fleshy substance, but upon the drying were shrunk into the bigness they now appear. The texture of it is such, that I have not yet met with any other body in the world that has the like, but only one of a larger sort of sponge, which is preserved in the museum Harvianum, belonging to the most illustrious and most learned society of the physicians of London, which is of a horny, or rather, of a petrified substance, and of this indeed the texture and make is exactly the same with common sponges, but only that both the holes and the fibres, or texture of it, is exceedingly much bigger, for some of the holes were above an inch and a half over, and the fibres and texture of it was big enough to be distinguished easily with one's eye, but conspicuously with an ordinary single microscope. And these indeed seemed to have been the habitation of some animal, and how many Aristotle I find a very consonant account here and to, namely that he had known a certain little animal called Pinocera, like a spider, to be bred in those caverns of a sponge, from within which, by opening and closing those holes, he ensnares and catches the little fishes, and in another place he says that is very confidently reported that there are certain moths or worms that reside in the cavities of a sponge, and are there nourished. Notwithstanding all which histories, I think it well worth the inquiring into the history and nature of a sponge, it seeming to promise some information of the vessels in animal substances, which by reason of the solidarity of the inserted flesh that is not easily removed, without destroying also those interspersed vessels, are hitherto undiscovered, whereas here in a sponge the Poenchaima it seems, is but a kind of mucous jelly, which is very easily and clearly washed away. The reason that makes me imagine, that there may probably be some such texture in animal substances, is that examining the texture of the filaments of tan leather, I find it to be much of the same nature and strength of a sponge, and with my microscope I have observed many such joints and knobs, as I have described in sponges. The fibres also in the hollow of several sorts of bones, after the marrow has been removed, I have found somewhat to resemble this texture, though I confess I never yet found any texture exactly the same, nor any for curiosity comparable to it. The filaments of it are much smaller than those of silk, and through the microscope appear very near as transparent, nay, some parts of them I have observed much more. Having examined also several kinds of mushrooms, I find their texture to be somewhat of this kind, that is, to consist of an infinite company of small filaments, every way context and woven together, so as to make a kind of cloth, and more particularly, examining a piece of wood which is a kind of Jew's ear, or mushroom, growing here in England also, on several sorts of trees, such as elders, maples, willows etc., and is commonly called by the name of spunk, but that we meet with to be sold in shops is brought from beyond seas. I have found it to be made of an exceeding delicate texture, for the substance of it feels, and looks to the naked eye, and may be stretched any way, exactly like a very fine piece of chamois leather, or washed leather, but it is of a somewhat browner hue, and nothing near so strong. But examining it with my microscope, I have found it of somewhat another make than any kind of leather, for whereas both chamois and all other kinds of leather I have yet viewed consist of an infinite company of filaments, somewhat like woven one with another, that is, of bigger parts or stems as it were, and smaller branchings that grow out of them, or like a heap of rope-sends, where each of the larger ropes by degrees seem to split or untwist into many smaller cords, and each of those cords into smaller lines, and those lines into threads etc., and these, strangely entangled, or into woven one within another. The texture of this touchwood seems more like that of a lock or a fleece of wool, for it consists of an infinite number of small filaments, all of them, as far as I could perceive, of the same bigness like those of a sponge, but that the filaments of this were not a twentieth part of the bigness of those of a sponge, and I could not so plainly perceive their joints, or their manner of interweaving, though as far as I was able to discern with that microscope I had, I suppose it to have some kind of resemblance, but the joints are nothing near so thick, nor without much trouble visible. The filaments I could plainly enough perceive to be even, round, cylindrical, transparent bodies, and to cross each other every way, that is, there were not more seemed to lie horizontally than perpendicularly and thought-way, so that it is somewhat difficult to conceive how they should grow in that manner. By tearing off a small piece of it, and looking on the ragged edge, I could among several of those fibres perceive small joints, that is, one of those hairs split into two, each of the same bigness with the other out of which they seem to grow. But having not lately had an opportunity of examining their manner of growth, I cannot positively affirm anything of them. But to proceed, the swelling of sponges upon wetting, and the rising of the water in it above the surface of the water that it touches, are both from the same cause, of which an account is already given in the sixth observation. The substance of them, indeed, has so many excellent properties, scarce to be met with in any other body in the world, that I have often wondered that it so little use is made of it, and those only vile and sordid, certainly, if it were well considered, it would afford much greater conveniences. That use which the divers are said to make of it seems, if true, very strange. But having made trial of it myself, by dipping a small piece of it in very good salad oil, and putting it in my mouth, and then keeping my mouth and nose under water, I could not find any such thing, for I was as soon out of breath as if I had had no sponge, nor could I fetch my breath without taking in water at my mouth. But I am very apt to think, that were there a contrivance whereby the expired air might be forced to pass through a wet or oily sponge, before it were again inspired, it might much cleanse, and strain away from the air diverse fulgeness and other noisome steams, and the habit in certain liquors might, perhaps, so renew that property in the air which it loses in the lungs by being breathed, that one square foot of air might last a man for respiration much longer, perhaps, then ten will now serve him of common air. I have not, among all the plants or vegetables I have yet observed, seen any one comparable to this seaweed I have here described, of which I am able to say very little more than what is presented by the second figure of the Ninth Scheme. Namely, that it is a plant which grows upon the rocks under the water, and increases and spreads itself into a great tuft, which is not only handsomely branched into several leaves, but the whole surface of the plant is covered over with a most curious kind of carved work, which consists of a texture much resembling a honeycomb. For the whole surface on both sides is covered over a multitude of very small holes, being no bigger than so many holes made with the point of a small pin, and ranged in the neatest and most delicate order imaginable, they being placed in the matter of a quincunx, or very much like the rows of the eyes of a fly, the rows or orders being very regular, which way so ever they are observed. What the texture was, as it appeared to a pretty big magnifying microscope, I have here adjoined in the first figure the 14th Scheme, which round area ABCD represents a part of the surface about one eighth part of an inch in diameter. Those little holes, which to the eye looked round like so many little spots, here appeared very regularly shaped holes, representing almost the shape of the sole of a round-toed shoe, the hindre part of which is, as it were, trod on or covered by the toe of that next below it. These holes seemed walled about with a very thin transparent substance, looking of a pale straw-color, from the edge of which, against the middle of each hole were sprouted out four small transparent straw-colored thorns, which seemed to protect and cover those cavities from either side. Two, near the root of this plant, were sprouted out from several small branches of a kind of bastard coraline, curiously branched, though small. And to confirm this, having lately the opportunity of viewing the large plant, if I may so call it, of a sponge petrified, of which I made mention in the last observation, I found that each of the branches or figures of it did, by the range of its pores, exhibit just such a texture. The rows of pores crossing one another much after the manner is the rows of eyes do, which are described in the 26th Scheme. Coraline also, in several sorts of white coral, I have with a microscope observed very curiously shaped. And I doubt not, but that he, that shall observe these several kinds of plants that grow upon rocks which the sea sometimes overflows, and those heaps of others which are vomited out of it upon the shore, may find multitudes of little plants in other bodies which, like this, will afford very beautiful objects for the microscope. And this specimen here is adjoined only to excite their curiosities who have the opportunity of observing to examine and collect what they find worthy their notice. For the sea among terrestrial bodies is also a prolific mother, and affords as many instances of spontaneous generations as either the air or earth. End of Section 28. Recording by Philip Gould. Section 29 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 29. Observation 24. Of the Surfaces of Rosemary and Other Leaves. This which is delineated within the circle of the second figure of the fourteenth scheme is a small part of the back or underside of a leaf of rosemary, which I did not therefore make choice of because it had anything peculiar which was not observable with a microscope in several other plants, but because it exhibits at one view. First a smooth and shining surface, namely AB, which is a part of the upper side of the leaf that by a kind of hem or doubling of the leaf appears on this side. There are multitudes of leaves which surfaces are like this smooth and as it were quilted, which look like a curious quilted bag of green silk or like a bladder or some such pliable transparent substance, full stuffed out with a green juice or liquor. The surface of roux or herbgrass is polished and all over indented or pitted like the silkworm's egg, which I shall anon describe. The smooth surfaces of other plants are otherwise quilted. Nature in this as it were expresses her needlework or embroidery. Next a downy or bushy surface, such as is all the underside almost, appearing through the microscope much like a thicket of bushes, and with this kind of down or hair the leaves and stalks of multitudes of vegetables are covered, and there seems to be as great a variety in the shape, bulk, and manner of the growing of these secondary plants, as I may call them, they being as it were a plant growing out of a plant or somewhat like the hairs of animals, as there is to be found among small shrubs that compose bushes. But for the most part they consist of small transparent parts, some of which grow in the shape of small needles or bodkins, as on the thistle, cowage cod, and nettle. Others in the form of cat's claws as in colliders, the beards of barley, the edges of several sorts of grass and reeds, etc. in other, as coltsfoot, rose-campion, apse, poplar, willow, and almost all other downy plants. They grow in the form of bushes very much diversified in each particular plant. That which I have before in the nineteenth observation noted on rose-leaves is of quite differing kind and seems indeed a real vegetable distinct from the leaf. Thirdly, among these small bushes are observable an infinite company of small round balls, exactly globular, and very much resembling pearls, namely CCCC. Of these there may be multitudes observed in sage and several other plants, which I suppose was the reason why Athanasius Kircher supposed them to be all covered with spiders' eggs or young spiders, which indeed is nothing else but some kind of gummus exudation, which is always much of the same bigness. At first sight of these I confess I imagine that they may have been some kind of matrices or nourishing receptacles for some small insect, just as I have found oak-apples and multitudes of such other large excrescent seas, on the leaves and other parts of trees and shrubs to be for flies and divers other insects, but observing them to be there all the year, and scarce at all to change their magnitude, that conjecture seemed not so probable, but whatever the use of it it affords a very pleasant object through the microscope and may perhaps upon further examination prove very luciferous. End of section 29, recording by Philip Gould.