fficient employment for a whole eternity. We can still divide it, and
still open it, and still discover new wonders of Providence, as we look
into the different texture of its parts, and meet with beds of
vegetables, mineral and metallic mixtures, and several kinds of animals
that lie hid, and as it were lost in such an endless fund of matter. I
find you are surprised at this discourse; but as your reason tells you
there are infinite parts in the smallest portion of matter, it will
likewise convince you, that there is as great a variety of secrets, and
as much room for discoveries, in a particle no bigger than the point of
a pin, as in the globe of the whole earth. Your microscopes bring to
sight shoals of living creatures in a spoonful of vinegar; but we who
can distinguish them in their different magnitudes, see among them
several huge leviathans, that terrify the little fry of animals about
them, and take their pastime as in an ocean, or the great deep." I could
not but smile at this part of his relation, and told him, I doubted not
but he could give me the history of several invisible giants,
accompanied with their respective dwarfs, in case that any of these
little beings are of a human shape. "You may assure yourself," said he,
"that we see in these little animals different natures, instincts and
modes of life, which correspond to what you observe in creatures of
bigger dimensions. We descry millions of species subsisted on a green
leaf, which your glasses represent only in crowds and swarms. What
appears to your eye but as hair or down rising on the surface of it, we
find to be woods and forests, inhabited by beasts of prey, that are as
dreadful in those their little haunts, as lions and tigers in the
deserts of Libya." I was much delighted with his discourse, and could
not forbear telling him, that I should be wonderfully pleased to see a
natural history of imperceptibles, containing a true account of such
vegetables and animals as grow and live out of sight. "Such
disquisitions," answered he, "are very suitable to reasonable creatures;
and you may be sure, there are many curious spirits amongst us who
employ themselves in such amusements. For as our hands, and all our
senses, may be formed to what degree of strength and delicacy we please,
in the same manner as our sight, we can make what experiments we are
inclined to, how small soever the matter be in which we make them. I
have been present at the dissection of