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The UNIVERSE.
Assisted thus, what Beauty may'st thou find,
In thousand Species of the Insect Kind!
Lost to the naked Eye, so wond'rous small,
Were Millions joyn'd, one [1]Sand would over-top them all.
In thousand Species of the Insect Kind!
Lost to the naked Eye, so wond'rous small,
Were Millions joyn'd, one [1]Sand would over-top them all.
Yet
- ↑ Those experienced in Observations on the Insect Part of the Creation, by the help of Glasses, will not charge this with being only a poetical Liberty, but acknowledge its real Truth: And though others, whose Conceptions have never lain that Way, may find it very difficult to apprehend any Living Creature so extreamly minute; yet I hope the Opinion of the Learned may clear me from any Design of imposing on their Belief.
Mr. Ball, in a Letter to Mr. Bradley, says, that Water's appearing Green, Red, or Black, proceeds only from Insects of several Kinds and Colours, 3d part Gardening, p. 87. "Nor indeed is any Part of the Earth, or Waters, and it may be the pure Air itself free from the Seeds of Life, p. 88." But this may better be conceiv'd by the following Note.
Mr. Bradley after having given us his Observations on an Insect, which by Computation he found more than a thousand times less than the least Dust of Sand visible to the naked Eye, p. 62. Reflects thus, p. 63. "It is wonderful to consider the several Parts of a Creature, even so minute as this (for the Microscope has discovered much smaller) how small must the Organs of its Senses be, in proportion to its Body! the Eyes perhaps a thousand times less, and the other Parts answerable to them: May we not then reasonably conclude, that with such Eyes it is capable of discerning other Bodies, which are as minute, and of as distant Smallness to itself as the smallest Creature capable of our Sight is to us? But, alas! how trifling an Object was the Insect I have mention'd in comparison to those discovered by M. Lewenhoeck, in a quantity of Pepper Water, no bigger than a Grain of Millet, in which he affirms to have seen 10,000 living Creatures; and some of his Friends, at the same time, witness to have seen 30,000, and others above 45,000 Creatures moving in that small Quantity of Water? Nay, they tell us, that because they would be within
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