to
excogitate divers wayes of performing it: And indeed it is possible to do
as much by _this method_ in _Mechanicks_, as by _Algebra_ can be perform'd
in _Geometry_. Nor can I at all doubt, but that the same method is as
applicable to _Physical Enquiries_, and as likely to find and reap thence
at plentiful a crop of Inventions; and indeed there seems to be no subject
so barren, but may with this good husbandry be highly improv'd.

Toward the prosecution of this method in _Physical Inquiries_, I have here
and there _gleaned_ up an _handful_ of Observations, in the collection of
most of which I made use of _Microscopes_, and some other _Glasses_ and
_Instruments_ that improve the sense; which way I have herein taken, not
that there are not multitudes of useful and pleasant Observables, yet
uncollected, obvious enough without the helps of Art, but only to promote
the use of Mechanical helps for the Senses, both in the surveying the
already visible World, and for the discovery of many others hitherto
unknown, and to make us, with the great Conqueror, to be affected that we
have not yet overcome one World when there are so many others to be
discovered, every considerable improvement of _Telescopes_ or _Microscopes_
producing new Worlds and _Terra-Incognita's_ to our view.

The Glasses I used were of our English make, but though very good of the
kind, yet far short of what might be expected, could we once find a way of
making Glasses Elliptical, or of some more true shape; for though both
_Microscopes_, and _Telescopes_, as they now are, will magnifie an Object
about a thousand thousand times bigger then it appears to the naked eye;
yet the Apertures of the Object-glasses are so very small, that very few
Rays are admitted, and even of those few there are so many false, that the
Object appears _dark_ and _indistinct_: And indeed these inconveniences are
such, as seem inseparable from Spherical Glasses, even when most exactly
made; but the way we have hitherto made use of for that purpose is so
imperfect, that there may be perhaps ten wrought before one be made
tolerably good, and most of those ten perhaps every one differing in
goodness one from another, which is an Argument, that the way hitherto used
is, at least, very uncertain. So that these Glasses have a double defect;
the one, that very few of them are exactly true wrought; the other, that
even of those that are best among them, none will admit a sufficient number
of R