[15]The body, as in other larger Insects, consists of three regions or parts; the hinder or belly A, seems covered with one intire shell, the middle, or chest, seems divided into two shells BC. which running one within the other, the Mite is able to shrink in and thrust out as it finds occasion, as it can also the snout D. The whole body is pretty transparent, so that being look’d on against the light, divers motions within its body may be perceived; as also all the parts are much more plainly delineable, then in other postures, to the light.  The shell, especially that which covers the back, is curiously polisht, so that ’tis easie to see, as in a convex Looking-glass, or foliated Glass-ball, the picture of all the objects round about; up and down, in several parts of its body, it has several small long white hairs growing out of its shell, which are often longer then the whole body, and are represented too short in the first and second Figures; they seem all pretty straight and plyable, save only two upon the fore-part of its body, which seem to be the horns, as may be seen in the Figures; the first whereof is a prospect of a smaller sort of Mites (which are usually more plump) as it was passant to and fro; the second is the prospect of one fixt on its tail (by means of a little mouth-glew rub’d on the object plate) exhibiting the manner of the growing of the legs, together with their several joynts.

This Creature is very much diversify’d in shape, colour, and divers other properties, according to the nature of the substance out of which it seems to be ingendred and nourished, being in one substance more long, in another more round, in some more hairy, in others more smooth, in this nimble, in that slow, here pale and whiter, there browner, blacker, more transparent, &c.  I have observed it to be resident almost on all kinds of substances that are mouldy, or putrifying, and have seen it very nimbly meshing through the thickets of mould, and sometimes to lye dormant underneath them; and ’tis not unlikely, but that it may feed on that vegetating substance, spontaneous Vegetables seeming a food proper enough for spontaneous Animals,

But whether indeed this Creature, or any other, be such or not, I cannot positively, from any Experiment, or Observation, I have yet made, determine.  But, as I formerly hinted, it seems probable, that some kind of wandring Mite may sow, as ’twere, the first seeds, or lay the first eggs, in those places, which Nature has instructed them to know convenient for the hatching and nourishing their young; and though perhaps the prime Parent might be of a shape very differing from what the offspring, after a little while, by reason of the substance they feed on, or the Region (as ’twere) they inhabite; yet perhaps even one of these alter’d progeny, wandering again from its native soil, and lighting on by chance the same place from whence its prime Parent came,