OF
MINUTE BODIES,
MADE BY
MAGNIFYING GLASSES;
WITH
OBSERVATIONS and INQUIRIES thereupon.
Observ. I. Of the Point of a sharp small Needle.
We will begin these our Inquiries therefore with the Observations of Bodies of the most simple nature first, and so gradually proceed to those of a more compounded one. In prosecution of which method, we shall begin with a Physical point; of which kind the Point of a Needle is commonly reckon'd for one; and is indeed, for the most part, made so sharp, that the naked eye cannot distinguish any parts of it: It very easily pierces, and makes its way through all kind of bodies softer then it self: But if view'd with a very good Microscope, we may find that the top of a Needle (though as to the sense very sharp) appears a broad, blunt, and very irregular end; not resembling a Cone, as is imagin'd, but onely a piece of a tapering body, with a great part of the top remov'd, or deficient. The Points of Pins are yet more blunt, and the Points of the most curious Mathematical Instruments do very seldome arrive at so great a sharpness; how much therefore can be built upon demonstrations made onely by the productions of the Ruler and Compasses, he will be better able to consider that shall but view those points and lines with a Microscope.
Now though this point be commonly accounted the sharpest (whence when we would express the sharpness of a point the most superlatively, we say, As sharp as a Needle) yet the Microscope can afford us hundreds of Instances of Points many thousand times sharper: such as those of the hairs, and bristles, and claws of multitudes of Insects; the thorns, or crooks, or hairs of leaves, and other small vegetables; nay, the ends of the stiriæ or small parallelipipeds of Amianthus, and alumen plumosum; of many of which, though the Points are so sharp as not to be visible, though view'd with a Microscope (which magnifies the Object, in bulk, above a million of times) yet I doubt not, but were we able practically to make Microscopes according to the theory of them, we might find hills, and dales, and pores, and a sufficient bredth, or expansion, to give all those parts elbow-room, even in the blunt top of the very Point of any of these so very sharp bodies. For certainly the quantity or extension of any body may be Divisible in infinitum, though perhaps not the matter.
Schem. 2. Fig. 1.
But to proceed: The Image we have here exhibited in the first Figure, was the top of a small and very sharp Needle, whose point aa nevertheless appear'd through the Microscope above a quarter of an inch broad, not round nor flat, but irregular and uneven; so that it seem'd to have been big enough to have afforded a hundred armed Mites room enough to be rang'd by each other without endangering the breaking one anothers necks, by being thrust off on either side. The surface of which, though appearing to the naked eye very smooth, could not nevertheless hide a multitude of holes and scratches and ruggednesses from being discover'd by the Microscope to invest it, several of which inequalities (as A, B, C, seem'd holes made by some small specks of Rust; and D some adventitious body, that stuck very close to it) were casual. All the rest that roughen the surface, were onely so many marks of the rudeness and bungling of Art. So unaccurate is it, in all its productions, even in those which seem most neat, that if examin'd with an organ more acute then that by which they were made, the more we see of their shape, the less appearance will there be of their beauty: whereas in the works of Nature, the deepest Discoveries shew us the greatest Excellencies. An evident Argument, that he that was the Author of all these things, was no other then Omnipotent; being able to include as great a variety of parts and contrivances in the yet smallest Discernable Point, as in those vaster bodies (which comparatively are called also Points) such as the Earth, Sun, or Planets. Nor need it seem strange that the Earth it self may be by Analogie call'd a Physical Point: For as its body, though now so near us as to fill our eys and fancies with a sense of the vastness of it, may by a little Distance, and some convenient Diminishing Glasses, be made vanish into a scarce visible Speck, or Point (as I have often try'd on the Moon, and (when not too bright) on the Sun it self.) So, could a Mechanical contrivance succesfully answer our Theory, we might see the least spot as big as the Earth it self; and Discover, as Des Cartes also conjectures (Diop. ch. 10. § 9.), as great a variety of bodies in the Moon, or Planets, as in the Earth.
But leaving these Discoveries to future Industries, we shall proceed to add one Observation more of a point commonly so call'd, that is, the mark of a full stop, or period. And for this purpose I observed many both printed ones and written; and among multitudes I found few of them more round or Schem. 2. Fig. 3. regular then this which I have delineated in the third figure of the second Scheme, but very many abundantly more disfigur'd; and for the most part if they seem'd equally round to the eye, I found those points that had been made by a Copper-plate, and Roll-press, to be as misshapen as those which had been made with Types, the most curious and smothly engraven strokes and points, looking but as so many furrows and holes, and their printed impressions, but like smutty daubings on a matt or uneven floor with a blunt extinguisht brand or stick's end. And as for points made with a pen they were much more ragged and deformed. Nay, having view'd certain pieces of exceeding curious writing of the kind (one of which in the bredth of a two-pence compris'd the Lords prayer, the Apostles Creed, the ten Commandments, and about half a dozen verses besides of the Bible, whose lines were so small and near together, that I was unable to number them with my naked eye,) a very ordinary Microscope, I had then about me, inabled me to see that what the Writer of it had asserted was true, but withall discover'd of what pitifull bungling scribbles and scrawls it was compos'd, Arabian and China characters being almost as well shap'd, yet thus much I must say for the Man, that it was for the most part legible enough, though in some places there wanted a good fantsy well preposest to help