the animal machine, but an inconceivable number of branching and winding canals, filled with liquors of different natures, going a perpetual round, and no more capable of producing the wonderful fabric of another animal, than a thing is of making itself. There is besides in the generation of an animal, a necessity that the head, heart, nerves, veins and arteries, be formed at the same time, which never can be done by the motion of any fluid, which way soever moved.

Great God, thou art the father of all things; even the father of insects, as well as the father of spirits; and thy greatness appears with a singular brightness in the least of thy creatures!

Concerning frogs generated in the clouds, there has been a mighty noise; the thunder scarce makes a greater! But Mr. Ray says well, it seems no more likely than the Spanish gennets begotten by the wind, for that has good authors too. He adds, he that can swallow the raining of frogs, hath made a fair step towards believing that it may rain calves also; for we read that one fell out of the clouds in Avicen's time. Fromondus' opinion, that the frogs which appear in great multitudes after a shower, are not indeed generated in the clouds, but are coagulated of dust, commixed and fermented with rain water, is all over as impertinent. It is very certain that frogs are of two different sexes, and have their spermatic vessels; and their copulation is notorious, and after the spawn must be cast into the water, where the eggs lie in the midst of a copious gelly; then must appear a feetless tadpole, in which form it must continue a long while, till the limbs grow out, and it arrives to the perfect form of a frog.

To what purpose all this, if your way, gentlemen, (Fromondus, and the rest) may suffice?

Frogs appearing in such multitudes upon rains, do but come forth upon the invitation which the agreeable vapour of rain water gives to them. And for some such reason we are commonly entertained with such armies of them in the cool summer evenings, that we wonder where they have been lurking all the day. Monsieur Perrault, upon the dissection of the falling frogs, which the equivocal gentlemen so teaze us with, found their stomachs full of meat, and their intestines of excrement. The inquisitive Mr. Derham, on his meeting with frogs in a prodigious number, crossing a sandy way just after a shower, pursued the matter with his usual exactness, and he soon found the colony issue from an adjacent pond, who having passed through their tadpole state, and finding the earth moistened for their march, took the opportunity to leave their old latibula, where they had now devoured their proper food, and seek a more convenient habitation. Or what if we suppose them, at least in their spawn, carried up into the clouds by the sun, and kept there till grown into the state wherein they fall down from thence, as it has been affirmed they have on vessels at sea?

As to the worms and other animals bred in the intestines of man and beast, "I think it may be proved, that the vast variety of worms found in almost all the parts of different animals, are taken into the respective bodies by meats and drinks.” Even the maggots which grow in the back of the common caterpillar, are by their parents lodged there, as a proper apartment for them. Toads found in the midst of trees, and in stones, when

they have been sawn asunder, no doubt grew of a toad spawn, which fell into that matter before the concretion thereof.

The vulgar opinion, that the heads or clothes of uncleanly people do breed lice, or that mites are bred in cheese, is a vulgar error: all such creatures are produced of eggs laid in such places by their parents; nature has endued them with a wonderous acuteness of scent and sagacity, whereby they can, though far distant, find out such places, and make towards them; and though they seem so slow, yet it has been found that in a little time they will march a considerable way to find out a convenient harbour. Here Mr. Ray makes a pause of religion; says he, "I cannot but look upon the strange instinct of this noisome and troublesome creature the louse, of seeking out foul and nasty clothes to harbour in, as an effect of divine Providence, designed to deter men and women from sordidness and sluttishness, and provoke them to cleanliness. God himself hates uncleanness, and turns away from it, Duet. xxiii, 12, 13, 14. But if God requires, and is pleased with bodily cleanliness, much more is He so with the pureness of the mind. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God!"

The eyes of insects have in them what is very admirable. Their great necessity for accurate vision is, in the reticulated cornea of their eyes, admirably provided for; it is a most curious piece of lattice-work, in which every foramen is of a lenticular nature, and enables the creature to see every way without any time or trouble; probably every lens of the cornea has a distinct branch of the optic nerve ministering to it.

Spiders are mostly octonocular; some as Mr. Willoughby thought, senocular. Flies are multoculor, having as many eyes as there are perfora tions in their corneæ. The greatest part of the head of that prædatious insect, the dragon fly, is possessed by its eyes.

Though we say, as blind as a beetle, Mr. Leuenhoeck has discovered at least three thousand eyes in the beetle.

Insects have their antennæ, by which they not only cleanse their eyes, but also guard them; their eyes being fitted mostly to see objects at a distance, these feelers obviate the inconvenience of their too rashly running their heads against objects that may be very near to them.

And many of them are, as Mr. Derham observes, surprisingly beautiful. The mechanism in those which creep is curious. What can exceed the oars of the amphibious insects, which swim and walk? Their hindmost legs are made most nicely, with commodious flat joints and bristles, on each side thereof towards the ends, serving for oars to swim; and nearer the body are two stiff spikes, to enable them to walk, as they have occasion.

An incomparable provision is made in the feet of such as walk or hang on smooth surfaces; divers of these, besides their acute and hooked nails, have also skinny palms on their feet, which enable them to stick on glass, and other smooth bodies, through the pressure of the atmosphere. The great strength and spring in the legs of such as leap, is very notable; and so are the well made feet and strong talons of such as dig.

Admirable the faculty of some which cannot

fly, to convey themselves with speed and safety, by the help of their webs, or some other artifice that renders their bodies lighter than the air. How pleasantly do the spiders dart out of their webs, and sail away by the help thereof; whereof Dr. Lyster and Dr. Hulse were some of the first who made a discovery? There seems to be a hint of their darting in Aristotle, and in Pliny; but the ancients knew nothing of their sailing. Some other little animals may have their ways of conveyance as unknown to us, as heretofore has been that of the spiders; creatures found in new pits, and holes in the tops of houses, where they were never bred by any equivocal generation. The green scum on the surface of stagnant waters, which is nothing but prodigious numbers of animalcules; how came they there? And when gone, where do they go? What can be better contrived than the legs of insects, most incomparably fitted for the intended service? Or than their wings, distended and strenghtened with the finest bones, and these covered with the lightest membranes, whereof some are adorned with the most beautiful feathers; for the elegant colours of moths and butterflies are owing to neat feathers on their wings, that are set in rows with great exactness, and all the good order imaginable? And some are provided with articulations, for their wings to be withdrawn, and folded up in cases, and again readily spread abroad upon occasion: scarabs and other that have elytra, are thus accommodated. That their bodies may be kept steady and upright, there is the admirable artifice of pointels and poises, under those which have no more than two wings, whereas the four winged ones have no such things: these poises in