Experimental philosophy, in three books containing new experiments microscopical, mercurial, magnetical : with some deductions, and probable hypotheses, raised from them, in avouchment and illustration of the now famous atomical hypothesis / by Henry Power ...

OBSERVAT. III. The Common Fly.

IT is a very pleasant Insect to behold: her body is as it were from head to tayl studded with silver and black

Armour, stuck all over with great black Bristles, like Porcupine quills, set all in parallel order, with their ends pointing all towards the tayl; her wings look like a Sea-fan with black thick ribs or fibers, dispers'd and branch'd through them, which are webb'd between with a thin membrane or film, like a slice of Muscovy-glasse: She hath a small head which she can move or turn any way: She hath six legs, but goes onely but upon four; the two foremost she makes use of instead of hands, with which you may often see her wipe her mouth and nose, and take up any thing to eat. The other four legs are cloven and arm'd with little clea's or tallons (like a Cata∣mount) by which she layes hold on the rugosities and asperities of all bodies she walks over, even to the sup∣portance of her self, though with her back downwards and perpendicularly invers'd to the Horizon. To which purpose also the wisdom of Nature hath endued her with another singular Artifice, and that is a fuzzy kinde of substance like little sponges, with which she hath lined the soles of her feet, which substance is always re∣pleated with a whitish viscous liquor▪ which she can at pleasure squeeze out, and so sodder and be-glew her self to the plain she walks on, which otherways her gravity would hinder (were it not for this contrivance) especial∣ly when she walks in those inverted positions.

But of all things her eyes are most remarkable, being exceeding large, ovally protuberant and most neatly dimpled with innumerable little cavities like a small gra∣ter or thimble, through which seeming perforations you may see a faint reddish colour (which is the blood in the eyes, for if you prick a pin through the eye, you shall finde more blood there, then in all the rest of her body.) The like foraminulous perforations or trelliced eyes are

in all Flyes, more conspicuously in Carnivorous or Flesh-Flyes, in the Stercorary or Yellow Flyes that feed upon Cow-dung: The like eyes I have also found in divers other Insects, as the Shepherd-flye or Spinster-flye, which Muffet calls Opilionum Muscam; also in Cantha∣rides or French-Flyes; also in all sorts of Scarabees, black and spotted; also in all sorts of Moth-flyes, called by Muffet, Phalaenae-papiliones; also in the May-Fly, But∣ter-flyes, Scorpion-tail'd-fly, Twinges, and Earwigs; most clearly in the sloe-black eye of the Crecket, and in the large eye of the Dragon-fly or Adderbolt. Many more observables there are in Common Flyes, as their Vivacity; for, when they appear desperate and quite for∣saken of their forms, by virtue of the Sun or warm ashes they will be revoked into life, and perform its functions again.

Had Domitian thus busied himself in the Contemplati∣on of this Animal, it had been an employment, not some∣times unworthy of Caesar.* 1.1 For, to conclude with Muffet; Dei verò virtutem quàm validè animalcula ista, parùm sanè valida, demonstrant? Contemplare enim vel minimum musci∣lionem, & quomodò in Tantillo Corpore, pedes, alas, oculos, pro∣muscidem, aliaque membra, omni filo minora, concinnè adapta∣vit Altissimus, edissere!

Notes

• * 1.1

  Muffet, lib. de In∣sectis, cap. 12.