EARLY DAYS OF THE MICROSCOPE 



accurate. Of the house fly he wrote : '' The head 

 is all eyes, prominent and without lids, lashes or 

 brows. It is plumed with hairs like that of an 

 ostrich and has two little pear shaped bodies hang- 

 ing from the middle of the forehead. The proboscis 

 which arises from the snout can be extended freely 

 and stretched forth to suck up humours and can 

 afterwards be directed back through the mouth and 

 taken into the gullet. This instinct nature has 

 given the creature according to its need, for it is 

 without a neck and cannot stretch forth its head to 

 obtain its food, as is also the case with the elephant." 

 The author's knowledge of the house fly was evi- 

 dently greater than his knowledge of the ostrich, 

 for the bird has anything but a plumed head. The 

 eye of the insect he compares to a white mulberry. 



Another of these early workers, writing about the 

 same time, gives a concise account of cheese mites, 

 heading his description '' On the creatures which 

 arise in powdery cheese," he wrote : " The powder 

 examined by means of this instrument (the Com- 

 pound Microscope) does not present the aspect of 

 dirt, but teems with animalcula. It can be seen 

 that these creatures have claws and talons and are 

 furnished with eyes. The whole surface of their 

 body is beautifully and distinctly coloured in such 

 sort as I have never seen before, and which indeed, 

 cannot be seen without wonder. They may be 

 observed to crawl, eat and work and are equal in 

 apparent size to a man's nail. Their backs are all 

 spiny and pricked out with various starlike markings 



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