464 Microscopical Essays. 



brifkiy ; the motion of their interlines was very vifible ; when the 

 water dried up, they died with apparent agonies, and their 

 mouths opened very wide. Now, were we to find a creature of 

 the fize of this magnified eel gafping in a place where water had 

 lately been, we certainly fhould never conclude it to be merely an 

 organic particle, or fortuitous allemblage of them, but a fiih. 

 Why then fhould we conclude other-wife with regard to the eel 

 m it's natural ftate, than that it is a little fiih ? In reafoning on 

 this fubject, we ought ever to remember, that however eflential 

 the diftin&ion of bodies into great and fmall may appear to us, 

 they are not fo to the Deity, with whom, as Mr. Baker well ex- 

 p re lies himfelf, " an atom is a world, and a world but as an 

 atom." — Were the Deity to exert his power a little and give a 

 natural philofopher a view of a quantity of pafte filled with eels, 

 from each of whofe bodies the light was reflected as in the folar 

 microfcope ; our philofopher, inftead of imagining them to be 

 mere organic particles, (as the pafte would appear like a little 

 mountain,) he would probably look upon the whole as an 

 affemblage of ferpents, and be afraid to come near them. 

 Whenever, therefore, we difcover beings to appearance endowed 

 with a principle of felf-prefervation, or whatever we make the 

 charaaeriftic of animals, neither the fmallnels of their fize, nor 

 the impoffibility of our knowing how they came there, ought to 

 caufe us to doubt of their being animated. * 



I (hall here infert feme extrafts of the experiments made by 

 Mr. Ellis at the defire of M. Linnaeus, and which are a full refu- 

 tation of thofe made by M. Needham and B. Munekhaufen. By 



thofe 



* Encyclopedia Britannica, vol. 1, p. 456. 



