sage out, or if you find
no passage, you may, by breaking or cutting the Gall, find in the middle of
it a small cavity, and in it a small body, which does plainly enough yet
retain a shape, to manifest it once to have been a Worm, though it dy'd by
a too early reparation from the Oak on which it grew, its navel-string, as
'twere, being broken off from the leaf or branch by which the Globular body
that invelop'd it, received its nourishment from the Oak.

And indeed, if we consider the great care of the Creator in the
dispensations of his providences for the propagation and increase of the
race, not onely of all kind of Animals, but even of Vegetables, we cannot
chuse but admire and adore him for his Excellencies, but we shall leave off
to admire the creature, or to wonder at the strange kind of acting in
several Animals, which seem to favour so much of reason; it seeming to me
most manifest, that those are but actings according to their structures,
and such operations as such bodies, so compos'd, must necessarily, when
there are such and such circumstances concurring, perform: thus, when we
find Flies swarming, about any piece of flesh that does begin a little to
ferment; Butterflies about Colworts, and several other leaves, which will
serve to hatch and nourish their young; Gnats, and several other Flies
about the Waters, and marishy places, or any other creatures, seeking and
placing their Seeds in convenient repositories, we may, if we attentively
consider and examine it, find that there are circumstances sufficient, upon
the supposals of the excellent contrivance of their machine, to excite and
force them to act after such or such a manner; those steams that rise from
these several places may, perhaps, set several parts of these little
Animals at work, even as in the contrivance of killing a Fox or Wolf with a
Gun, the moving of a string, is the death of the Animal; for the Beast, by
moving the flesh that is laid to entrap him, pulls the string which moves
the trigger, and that lets go the Cock which on the steel strikes certain
sparks of fire which kindle the powder in the pann, and that presently
flies into the barrel, where the powder catching fire rarifies and drives
out the bullet which kills the Animal; in all which actions, there is
nothing of intention or ratiocination to be ascrib'd either to the Animal
or Engine, but all to the ingeniousness of the contriver.

But to return to the more immediate considerati