ncompass it, so that it
seems this Creature has no very good foresight: It does not seem to have
any eye-lids, and therefore perhaps its eyes were so placed, that it might
the better cleanse them with its fore-legs; and perhaps this may be the
reason, why they so much avoid and run from the light behind them, for
being made to live in the shady and dark recesses of the hair, and thence
probably their eye having a great aperture, the open and clear light,
especially that of the Sun, must needs very much offend them; to secure
these eyes from receiving any injury from the hairs through which it
passes, it has two horns that grow before it, in the place where one would
have thought the eyes should be; each of these CC hath four joynts, which
are fringed, as 'twere, with small brisles, from which to the tip of its
snout D, the head seems very round and tapering, ending in a very sharp
nose D, which seems to have a small hole, and to be the passage through
which he sucks the blood. Now whereas if it be plac'd on its back, with its
belly upwards, as it is in the 35. _Scheme_, it seems in several Positions
to have a resemblance of chaps, or jaws, as is represented in the Figure by
EE, yet in other postures those dark strokes disappear; and having kept
several of them in a box for two or three dayes, so that for all that time
they had nothing to feed on, I found, upon letting one creep on my hand,
that it immediately fell to sucking, and did neither seem to thrust its
nose very deep into the skin, nor to open any kind of mouth, but I could
plainly perceive a small current of blood, which came directly from its
snout, and past into its belly; and about A there seem'd a contrivance,
somewhat resembling a Pump, pair of Bellows, or Heart, for by a very swift
_systole_ and _diastole_ the blood seem'd drawn from the nose, and forced
into the body. It did not seem at all, though I viewed it a good while as
it was sucking, to thrust more of its nose into the skin then the very
snout D, nor did it cause the least discernable pain, and yet the blood
seem'd to run through its head very quick and freely, so that it seems
there is no part of the skin but the blood is dispers'd into, nay, even
into the _cuticula_; for had it thrust its whole nose in from D to CC, it
would not have amounted to the supposed thickness of that _tegument_, the
length of the nose being not more then a three hundredth part of an inch.
It has six legs, covered with a v