And this
seems yet more probable in these Insects, because that the soil or body
they inhabit, seems to be almost half their parent, for it not only hatches
and brings those little eggs, or seminal principles, to perfection, but
seems to augment and nourish them also before they are hatch'd or shaped;
for it is obvious enough to be observ'd, that the eggs of many other
Insects, and particularly of Mites, are increas'd in bulk after they are
laid out of the bodies of the Insects, and plump'd sometimes into many
times their former bigness, so that the bodies they are laid in being, as
it were, half their mothers, we shall not wonder that it should have such
an active power to change their forms. We find by relations how much the
_Negro_ Women do besmeer the of-spring of the _Spaniard_, bringing forth
neither white-skinn'd nor black, but tawny hided _Mulattos_.
Now, though I propound this as probable, I have not yet been so farr
certify'd by Observations as to conclude any thing, either positively or
negatively, concerning it. Perhaps, some more lucky diligence may please
the curious Inquirer with the discovery of this, to be a truth, which I now
conjecture, and may thereby give him a satisfactory account of the cause of
those creatures, whose original seems yet to obscure, and may give him
cause to believe, that many other animate beings, that seem also to be the
mere product of putrifaction, may be innobled with a Pedigree as ancient as
the first creation, and farr exceed the greatest beings in their numerous
Genealogies.
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