dales, and pores, and a sufficient bredth, or expansion, to give all those parts elbow-room, even in the blunt top of the very Point of any of these so very sharp bodies. For certainly the quantity or extension of any body may be Divisible in infinitum, though perhaps not the matter.
Schem. 2. Fig. 1.
But to proceed: The Image we have here exhibited in the first Figure, was the top of a small and very sharp Needle, whose point aa nevertheless appear'd through the Microscope above a quarter of an inch broad, not round nor flat, but irregular and uneven; so that it seem'd to have been big enough to have afforded a hundred armed Mites room enough to be rang'd by each other without endangering the breaking one anothers necks, by being thrust off on either side. The surface of which, though appearing to the naked eye very smooth, could not nevertheless hide a multitude of holes and scratches and ruggednesses from being discover'd by the Microscope to invest it, several of which inequalities (as A, B, C, seem'd holes made by some small specks of Rust; and D some adventitious body, that stuck very close to it) were casual. All the rest that roughen the surface, were onely so many marks of the rudeness and bungling of Art. So unaccurate is it, in all its productions, even in those which seem most neat, that if examin'd with an organ more acute then that by which they were made, the more we see of their shape, the less appearance will there be of their beauty: whereas in the works of Nature, the deepest Discoveries shew us the greatest Excellencies. An evident Argument, that he that was the Author of all these things, was no other then Omnipotent; being able to include as great a variety of parts and contrivances in the yet smallest Discernable Point, as in those vaster bodies (which comparatively are called also Points) such as the Earth, Sun, or Planets. Nor need it seem strange that the Earth it self may be by Analogie call'd a Physical Point: For as its body, though now so near us as to fill our eys and fancies with a sense of the vastness of it, may by a little Distance, and some convenient Diminishing Glasses, be made vanish into a scarce visible Speck, or Point (as I have often try'd on the Moon, and (when not too bright) on the Sun it self.) So, could a Mechanical contrivance succesfully answer our Theory, we might see the least spot as big as the Earth it self; and Discover, as Des Cartes also conjectures (Diop. ch. 10. § 9.), as great a variety of bodies in the Moon, or Planets, as in the Earth.
But leaving these Discoveries to future Industries, we shall proceed to add one Observation more of a point commonly so call'd, that is, the mark of a full stop, or period. And for this purpose I observed many both printed ones and written; and among multitudes I found few of them more round or Schem. 2. Fig. 3. regular then this which I have delineated in the third figure of the second Scheme, but very many abundantly more disfigur'd; and for the most part if they seem'd equally round to the eye, I found those points that had been made by a Copper-plate, and Roll-press, to be as misshapen as those which had been made with Types, the most curious and smothly engraven strokes and points, looking but as so many furrows and holes, and their printed impressions, but like smutty daubings on a matt or uneven floor with a blunt extinguisht brand or stick's end. And as for points made with a pen they were much more ragged and deformed. Nay, having view'd certain pieces of exceeding curious writing of the kind (one of which in the bredth of a two-pence compris'd the Lords prayer, the Apostles Creed, the ten Commandments, and about half a dozen verses besides of the Bible, whose lines were so small and near together, that I was unable to number them with my naked eye,) a very ordinary Microscope, I had then about me, inabled me to see that what the Writer of it had asserted was true, but withall discover'd of what pitifull bungling scribbles and scrawls it was compos'd, Arabian and China characters being almost as well shap'd, yet thus much I must say for the Man, that it was for the most part legible enough, though in some places there wanted a good fantsy well preposest to help one through. If this manner of small writing were made easie and practicable (and I think I know such a one, but have never yet made tryal of it, whereby one might be inabled to write a great deale with much ease, and accurately enough in a very little roome) it might be of very good use to convey secret Intelligence without any danger of Discovery or mistrusting. But to come again to the point. The Irregularities of it are caused by three or four coadjutors, one of which is, the uneven surface of the paper, which at best appears no smother then a very course piece of shag'd cloth, next the irregularity of the Type or Ingraving, and a third is the rough Daubing of the Printing-Ink that lies upon the instrument that makes the impression, to all which, add the variation made by the Different lights and shadows, and you may have sufficient reason to guess that a point may appear much more ugly then this, which I have here presented, which though it appear'd through the Microscope gray, like a great splatch of London dirt, about three inches over; yet to the naked eye it was black and no bigger then that in the midst of the Circle A. And could I have found Room in this Plate to have inserted an O you should have seen that the letters were not more distinct then the points of Distinction, nor a drawn circle more exactly so, then we have now shown a point to be a point.
Observ. II. Of the Edge of a Razor.
The sharpest Edge hath the same kind of affinity to the sharpest Point in Physicks, as a line hath to a point in Mathematicks; and therefore the Treaty concerning this, may very properly be annexed to the former. A Razor doth appear to be a Body of a very neat and curious aspect, till more closely viewed by the Microscope, and there we may observe its very Edge to be of all kind of shapes, except what it should be. For examining that of a very sharp one, I could not find that any part of it had any thing of sharpness in it; but it appeared a rough surface of a very considerable bredth from side to side, the narrowest part not seeming thinner then the back of a pretty thick Knife. Nor is't likely that it should appear any otherwise, since as we just now shew'd that a point appear'd a circle, 'tis rational a line should be a parallelogram.
Schem. 2. Fig. 2.
Now for the drawing this second Figure (which represents a part of the Edge about half a quarter of an inch long of a Razor well set) I so plac'd it between the Object-glass & the light, that there appear'd a reflection from the very Edge, represented by the white line abcdef. In which you may perceive it to be somewhat sharper then elsewhere about d, to be indented or pitted about b, to be broader and thicker about c, and unequal and rugged about e, and pretty even between ab and ef. Nor was that part of the Edge ghik so smooth as one would imagine so smooth bodies as a Hone and Oyl should leave it; for besides those multitudes of scratches, which appear to have raz'd the surface ghik, and to cross each other every way which are not half of them exprest in the Figure, there were several great and deep scratches, or furrows, such as gh and ik, which made the surface yet more rugged, caus'd perhaps by some small Dust casually falling on the Hone, or some harder or more flinty part of the Hone it self. The other part of the Razor ll, which is polish'd on a grinding-stone, appear'd much rougher then the other, looking almost like a plow'd field, with many parallels, ridges, and furrows, and a cloddy, as 'twere, or an uneven surface: nor shall we wonder at the roughnesses of those surfaces, since even in the most curious wrought Glasses for Microscopes, and other Optical uses, I have, when the Sun has shone well on them, discover'd their surface to be variously raz'd or scratched, and to consist of an infinite of small broken surfaces, which reflect the light of very various and differing colours. And indeed it seems impossible by Art to cut the surface of any hard and brittle body smooth, since Putte, or even the most curious Powder
