ROTIFERA. 



41 



that we may think this likely ? For we know there are some living 

 creatures so small that we can scarce see their whole bodies. Yet 

 even these have their young ones ; their little veins and other vessels, 

 and their eyes so small as that no microscope can make them visible. 

 So that we cannot suppose any magnitude so little, but that our very 

 supposition is actually exceeded by nature. 



"Besides, there are now" (the book was published in 1655) "such 

 microscopes commonly made, that the things we see with them appear 

 a thousand times bigger than they would do if we looked upon them 

 with our bare eyes. Nor is there any doubt but that, by augmenting 

 the power of these microscopes (for it may be augmented as long as 

 neither matter nor the hands of workmen are wanting), every one of 

 those thousandth parts might yet appear a thousand times greater 

 than they did before. Neither is the smallness of some bodies to be 

 more admired than the vast greatness of others. For it belongs to 

 the same Infinite Power as well to augment infinitely as infinitely to 

 diminish. To make the great orb, namely, that whose radius 

 reacheth to the sun, but as a point in respect of the distance between 

 the sun and the fixed stars ; and, on the contrary, to make a body so 

 little, as to be in the same proportion less than any other visible body, 

 proceed equally from one and the same Author of Nature. But this 

 of the immense distance of the fixed stars, which for a long time was 

 accounted an incredible thing, is now believed by almost all the 

 learned. Why then should not that other, of the smallness of some 

 bodies, become credible at some time or other ? For the majesty of 

 God appears no less in small tilings than in great ; and as it exceedeth 

 human sense in the immense greatness of the universe, so also it doth 

 in the smallness of the parts thereof. Nor are the first elements of 

 compositions, nor the first beginnings of actions, nor the first 

 moments of time more credible, than that which is now believed of 

 the vast distance of the fixed stars."* 



I have said, that in the diminutive Polygastria, there might be 

 discerned structures analogous to our own. Vibratile cilia — their 

 sole organs of locomotion — are the first actively moving parts with 

 which the mammiferous ovum is endowed, with which, therefore, we 



* XXXin. ToL L p. 445. A similar idea had occurred to a mach older philo- 

 sopher : — 



" Tertia pars nulla ut possit ratione videri. 

 Horum intestinum quodvis quale esse putandum 'st ? 

 Quid cordis globus aut oculi ? quid membra ? qidd artes ? 

 Quantula sunt ? quid praeterea primordia quaeque, 

 Undc anima, atque animi constet natura, necessum est ? " 



LticnL lib. It. 



