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Hooke, Robert, 1635-1703

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

For this has discovered
to me, by means of a very bright light cast on it, that it is a Creature of
a very odd shape; it has a head shap'd like that exprest in 35. _Scheme_
marked with A, which seems almost Conical, but is a little flatted on the
upper and under sides, at the biggest part of which, on either side behind
the head (as it were, being the place where other Creatures ears stand) are
placed its two black shining goggle eyes BB, looking backwards, and fenced
round with several small _cilia_, or hairs that incompass it, so that it
seems this Creature has no very good foresight: It does not seem to have
any eye-lids, and therefore perhaps its eyes were so placed, that it might
the better cleanse them with its fore-legs; and perhaps this may be the
reason, why they so much avoid and run from the light behind them, for
being made to live in the shady and dark recesses of the hair, and thence
probably their eye having a great aperture, the open and clear light,
especially that of the Sun, must needs very much offend them; to secure
these eyes from receiving any injury from the hairs through which it
passes, it has two horns that grow before it, in the place where one would
have thought the eyes should be; each of these CC hath four joynts, which
are fringed, as 'twere, with small brisles, from which to the tip of its
snout D, the head seems very round and tapering, ending in a very sharp
nose D, which seems to have a small hole, and to be the passage through
which he sucks the blood.


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