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Hooke, Robert, 1635-1703

"Micrographia Some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies Made by Magnifying Glasses with Observations and Inquiries Thereupon"


The small blunt head of this Insect was furnish'd on either side of it with
a cluster of eyes, each of which seem'd to contain but a very few, in
comparison of what I had observ'd the clusters of other Insects to abound
with; each of these clusters were beset with a row of small brisles, much
like the _cilia_ or hairs on the eye-lids, and, perhaps, they serv'd for
the same purpose. It had two long horns before, which were streight, and
tapering towards the top, curiously ring'd or knobb'd, and brisled much
like the Marsh Weed, call'd Horse-tail, or Cats-tail, having at each knot a
fring'd Girdle, as I may so call it, of smaller hairs, and several bigger
and larger brisles, here and there dispers'd among them: besides these, it
had two shorter horns, or feelers, which were knotted and fring'd, just as
the former, but wanted brisles, and were blunt at the ends; the hinder part
of the creature was terminated with three tails, in every particular
resembling the two longer horns that grew out of the head: The leggs of it
were scal'd and hair'd much like the rest, but are not express'd in this
_Figure_, the Moth being intangled all in Glew, and so the leggs of this
appear'd not through the Glass which looked perpendicularly upon the back.
This Animal probably feeds upon the Paper and covers of Books, and
perforates in them several small round holes, finding, perhaps, a
convenient nourishment in those hulks of Hemp and Flax, which have pass'd
through so many scourings, washings, dressings and dryings, as the parts of
old Paper must necessarily have suffer'd; the digestive faculty, it seems,
of these little creatures being able yet further to work upon those
stubborn parts, and reduce them into another form.


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