on of our Gnat: We have in
it an Instance, not usual or common, of a very strange _amphibious_
creature, that being a creature that inhabits the Air, does yet produce a
creature, that for some time lives in the water as a Fish, though afterward
(which is as strange) it becomes an inhabitant of the Air, like its Sire,
in the form of a Fly. And this, methinks, does prompt me to propose certain
conjectures, as Queries, having not yet had sufficient opportunity and
leisure to answer them my self from my own Experiments or Observations.

And the first is, Whether all those things that we suppose to be bred from
corruption and putrifaction, may not be rationally suppos'd to have their
origination as natural as these Gnats, who, 'tis very probable, were first
dropt into this Water, in the form of Eggs. Those Seeds or Eggs must
certainly be very small, which so small a creature as a Gnat yields, and
therefore, we need not wonder that we find not the Eggs themselves, some of
the younger of them, which I have observ'd, having not exceeded a tenth
part of the bulk they have afterwards come to; and next, I have observed
some of those little ones which must have been generated after the Water
was inclosed in the Bottle, and therefore most probably from Eggs, whereas
those creatures have been suppos'd to be bred of the corruption of the
Water, there being not formerly known any probable way how they should be
generated.

A second is, whether these Eggs are immediately dropt into the Water by the
Gnats themselves, or, mediately, are brought down by the falling rain; for
it seems not very improbable, but that those small seeds of Gnats may
(being, perhaps, of so light a nature, and having so great a proportion of
surface to so small a bulk of body) be ejected into the Air, and so,
perhaps, carried for a good while too and fro in it, till by the drops of
Rain it be wash'd out of it.

A third is, whether multitudes of those other little creatures that are
found to inhabit the Water for some time, do not, at certain times, take
wing and fly into the Air, others dive and hide themselves in the Earth,
and so contribute to the increase both of the one and the other Element.

* * * * *

_Postscript._

A good while since the writing of this Description, I was presented by
Doctor _Peter Ball_, an ingenious Member of the _Royal Society_, with a
little Paper of Nuts, which he told me was sent him from a Brother