But to return to the more immediate consideration of our Gnat: We have in
it an Instance, not usual or common, of a very strange _amphibious_
creature, that being a creature that inhabits the Air, does yet produce a
creature, that for some time lives in the water as a Fish, though afterward
(which is as strange) it becomes an inhabitant of the Air, like its Sire,
in the form of a Fly. And this, methinks, does prompt me to propose certain
conjectures, as Queries, having not yet had sufficient opportunity and
leisure to answer them my self from my own Experiments or Observations.
And the first is, Whether all those things that we suppose to be bred from
corruption and putrifaction, may not be rationally suppos'd to have their
origination as natural as these Gnats, who, 'tis very probable, were first
dropt into this Water, in the form of Eggs. Those Seeds or Eggs must
certainly be very small, which so small a creature as a Gnat yields, and
therefore, we need not wonder that we find not the Eggs themselves, some of
the younger of them, which I have observ'd, having not exceeded a tenth
part of the bulk they have afterwards come to; and next, I have observed
some of those little ones which must have been generated after the Water
was inclosed in the Bottle, and therefore most probably from Eggs, whereas
those creatures have been suppos'd to be bred of the corruption of the
Water, there being not formerly known any probable way how they should be
generated.
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