f 289 3 
to my memory, but reduced to writing immedi- 
ately after I had finifhed my obfcrvations. 
This curious phenomenon naturally leads one to 
enquire, how thefe creatures came to breed on the 
Cornel-trees, and what occafioned the prodigious 
encreafe of them at that time. Here fad gives us 
up to conjectures. I hope however that mine will 
not feem to your Lordfhip altogether unfatisfadory, 
but rather help to clear up thofe difficulties, and at 
the fame time carry our eyes a little farther into 
nature, than merely to what concerns this fpecies 
of infeds. 
There is not an animal, nor a vegetable, that may 
not be confidered as a little world, in refped to the 
habitation and nouriffiment it affords to certain in- 
feds peculiar to itfelf. The fchcme of life begins 
in vegetation 5 and wherever on the earth, or in the 
water, nature is able to produce vegetables, fhe al- 
ways obliges them to pay for their elemental nou- 
rifhment to certain infeds, animals, or fifties, which 
fhe billets on them. Thefe again are forced to re- 
fund to others, to diet and lodge, each of them, a 
fet of living creatures, affigned to them by the uni- 
verfal fcheme of nature. 
This traffique of life, this juft community in na- 
ture, which fuffers nothing to fubfift merely for 
itfelf, is found not only every where on the race of 
the earth, but alfo in all lakes, pools, rivers, and 
in the ocean. By microfcopes we difeover a prodi- 
gious variety of little creatures, all feeding either 
on the floating vegetables, which that element pro- 
duces in a ftate of ftagnation, or on one another. 
As to the fea in particular, we know only what 
happens 
