The small blunt head of this Insect was furnish’d on either side of it with a cluster of eyes, each of which seem’d to contain but a very few, in comparison of what I had observ’d the clusters of other Insects to abound with; each of these clusters were beset with a row of small brisles, much like the cilia or hairs on the eye-lids, and, perhaps, they serv’d for the same purpose.  It had two long horns before, which were streight, and tapering towards the top, curiously ring’d or knobb’d, and brisled much like the Marsh Weed, call’d Horse-tail, or Cats-tail, having at each knot a fring’d Girdle, as I may so call it, of smaller hairs, and several bigger and larger brisles, here and there dispers’d among them:  besides these, it had two shorter horns, or feelers, which were knotted and fring’d, just as the former, but wanted brisles, and were blunt at the ends; the hinder part of the creature was terminated with three tails, in every particular resembling the two longer horns that grew out of the head:  The leggs of it were scal’d and hair’d much like the rest, but are not express’d in this Figure, the Moth being intangled all in Glew, and so the leggs of this appear’d not through the Glass which looked perpendicularly upon the back.

This Animal probably feeds upon the Paper and covers of Books, and perforates in them several small round holes, finding, perhaps, a convenient nourishment in those hulks of Hemp and Flax, which have pass’d through so many scourings, washings, dressings and dryings, as the parts of old Paper must necessarily have suffer’d; the digestive faculty, it seems, of these little creatures being able yet further to work upon those stubborn parts, and reduce them into another form.

And indeed, when I consider what a heap of Saw-dust or chips this little creature (which is one of the teeth of Time) conveys into its intrals, I cannot chuse but remember and admire the excellent contrivance of Nature, in placing in Animals such a fire, as is continually nourished and supply’d by the materials convey’d into the stomach, and fomented by the bellows of the lungs; and in so contriving the most admirable fabrick of Animals, as to make the very spending and wasting of that fire, to be instrumental to the procuring and collecting more materials to augment and cherish it self, which indeed seems to be the principal end of all the contrivances observable in bruit Animals.

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Observ.  LIII. Of a Flea_._

The strength and beauty of this small creature, had it no other relation at all to man, would deserve a description.