the same kind of object which is represented to it from the filaments of Silk and Hair by the help of the Microscope.  Now, since the threads of Silk and Serge are made up of a great number of these filaments, we may henceforth cease to wonder at the difference.  From much the same reason proceeds the vivid and lovely colours of Feathers, wherein they very farr exceed the natural as well as Artificial colours of hair, of which I shall say more in its proper place.

The Teguments indeed of creatures are all of them adapted to the peculiar use and convenience of that Animal which they inwrap; and very much also for the ornament and beauty of it, as will be most evident to any one that shall attentively consider the various kinds of cloathings wherewith most creatures are by Nature invested and cover’d.  Thus I have observed, that the hair or furr of those Northern white Bears that inhabite the colder Regions, is exceeding thick and warm:  the like have I observ’d of the hair of a Greenland Deer, which being brought alive to London, I had the opportunity of viewing; its hair was so exceeding thick, long and soft, that I could hardly with my hand, grasp or take hold of his skin, and it seem’d so exceeding warm, as I had never met with any before.  And as for the ornamentative use of them, it is most evident in a multitude of creatures, not onely for colour, as the Leopards, Cats, Rhein Deer, _&c_. but for the shape, as in Horses manes, Cats beards, and several other of the greater sort of terrestrial Animals, but is much more conspicuous, in the Vestments of Fishes, Birds, Insects, of which I shall by and by give some Instances.

As for the skin, the Microscope discovers as great a difference between the texture of those several kinds of Animals, as it does between their hairs; but all that I have yet taken notice of, when tann’d or dress’d, are of a Spongie nature, and seem to be constituted of an infinite company of small long fibres or hairs, which look not unlike a heap of Tow or Okum; every of which fibres seem to have been some part of a Muscle, and probably, whil’st the Animal was alive, might have its distinct function, and serve for the contraction and relaxation of the skin, and for the stretching and shrinking of it this or that way.

And indeed, without such a kind of texture as this, which is very like that of Spunk it would seem very strange, how any body so strong as the skin of an Animal usually is, and so close as it seems, whil’st the Animal is living, should be able to suffer so great an extension any ways, without at all hurting or dilacerating any part of it.  But, since we are inform’d by the Microscope, that it consists of a great many small filaments, which are implicated, or intangled one within another, almost no otherwise then the hairs in a lock of Wool, or the flakes in a heap of Tow, though not altogether so loose, but the filaments are here and there twisted,