Much resembling a Cobweb, or a confus’d lock of these Cylinders, is a certain white substance which, after a fogg, may be observ’d to fly up and down the Air; catching several of these, and examining them with my Microscope, I found them to be much of the same form, looking most like to a flake of Worsted prepar’d to be spun, though by what means they should be generated, or produc’d, is not easily imagined:  they were of the same weight, or very little heavier then the Air; and ’tis not unlikely, but that those great white clouds, that appear all the Summer time, may be of the same substance.

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Observ.  XLIX. Of an Ant_ or Pismire._

This was a creature, more troublesom to be drawn, then any of the rest, for I could not, for a good while, think of a way to make it suffer its body to ly quiet in a natural posture; but whil’st it was alive, if its feet were fetter’d in Wax or Glew, it would so twist and wind its body, that I could not any wayes get a good view of it; and if I killed it, its body was so little, that I did often spoile the shape of it, before I could throughly view it:  for this is the nature of these minute Bodies, that as soon, almost, as ever their life is destroy’d, their parts immediately shrivel, and lose their beauty; and so is it also with small Plants, as I instanced before, in the description of Moss.  And thence also is the reason of the variations in the beards of wild Oats, and in those of Musk-grass seed, that their bodies, being exceeding small, those small variations which are made in the surfaces of all bodies, almost upon every change of Air, especially if the body be porous, do here become sensible, where the whole body is so small, that it is almost nothing but surface; for as in vegetable substances, I see no great reason to think, that the moisture of the Aire (that, sticking to a wreath’d beard, does make it untwist) should evaporate, or exhale away, any faster then the moisture of other bodies, but rather that the avolation from, or access of moisture to, the surfaces of bodies being much the same, those bodies become most sensible of it, which have the least proportion of body to their surface.  So is it also with Animal substances; the dead body of an Ant, or such little creature, does almost instantly shrivel and dry, and your object shall be quite another thing, before you can half delineate it, which proceeds not from the extraordinary exhalation, but from the small proportion of body and juices, to the usual drying of bodies in the Air, especially if warm.  For which inconvenience, where I could not otherwise remove it, I thought of this expedient.