The first mite: insect genealogy in Hooke’s Micrographia^*

* This article is a revised version of an essay originally titled ‘Micrographia in context: Hooke on the genealogy of insects’, which was the winner of the 2017 Annals of Science Essay Prize.

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

ABSTRACT

What happens when you take the idea of the biblical Adam—the first human – and apply it to insects? You create an origin story for Nature’s tiniest creatures, one that gives them ‘a Pedigree as ancient as the first creation’. This the naturalist Robert Hooke argued in his treatise, the Micrographia (1665). In what follows, I will retrace how Hooke endeavoured to show that insects—then widely believed to have arisen out of the dirt – were the products of an ancient lineage. These genealogies, while constructed from empirical observation, were conjectures of the imagination. Section 2 shows how Hooke introduced the concept of a ‘prime parent’ (an Adam-insect) to explain the anatomical similarities between ‘mites’. Section 3 demonstrates how Hooke defined the family of “gnats” as tiny machines built from the same components and relates Hookean genealogies to contemporary ideas about Noah’s Ark. Section 4 shows how Hooke outlined the morphology of ‘insects’ (delineating what we now call arthropods). Section 5 explores how Hooke used fossils to study these animals in the distant past. In sum, Hooke was turning natural history – collecting and describing insects – into natural history: reconstructing their origins.

Acknowledgement

I am grateful to the anonymous referee for helpful suggestions as well as to the Program in History of Science at Princeton for lively discussion. For feedback and guidance, I am indebted to Monica Azzolini, Angela Creager, Mordechai Feingold, Michael Gordin, Anthony Grafton, Netta Green, Felicity Henderson, Matthieu Kohl, Rhodri Lewis, Jennifer Rampling and Jessica Riskin. Above all, I want to thank Diana and Jed Buchwald to whom I dedicate this publication.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

* This article is a revised version of an essay originally titled ‘Micrographia in context: Hooke on the genealogy of insects’, which was the winner of the 2017 Annals of Science Essay Prize.

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

1 Robert Hooke, Micrographia, or Some Phyisological Descriptions of Minute Bodies, made by Magnifying Glasses, with Observations and Inquiries thereupon (London: John Martyn and James Allestry, 1665), p. 207. From now on: Micrographia.

2 Micrographia, sig. a2v.

3 Micrographia, p. 112–3.

4 Micrographia, p. 113–4.

5 A. R. Hall, Hooke’s Micrographia, 1665–1965 (London: The Athlone Press, 1966), p. 20. See also Marian Fournier, The Fabric of Life: Microscopy in the Seventeenth Century (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1996), which argues that this type of reasoning drove microscopy as a whole throughout the seventeenth century.

6 Recent studies take a different tack, illuminating other aspects of Hooke’s insect drawings. See Domenico Bertoloni Meli, ‘The Representation of Insects in the Seventeenth Century: A Comparative Approach’, Annals of Science, 67, No. 3 (2010), 405–29, here: 410–19; Janice Neri, The Insect and the Image. Visualizing Nature in Early Modern Europe 1500–1700 (Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 2011), pp. 105–38; Meghan Doherty, ‘Discovering the “True Form”: Hooke’s Micrographia and the Visual Vocabulary of Engraved Portraits’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society, 66, Issue 3 (2012), 211–34.

7 Micrographia, sig. g2v.

8 For Hooke’s social standing, see Mordechai Feingold, ‘Robert Hooke: Gentleman of Science’, in Robert Hooke. Tercentennial Studies, ed. by Michael Cooper and Michael Hunter (Aldershot: Ashgate), pp. 203–18. For the social context of the Micrographia, in particular, see John Harwood, ‘Rhetoric and Graphics in Micrographia’, in Robert Hooke. New Studies, ed. by Michael Hunter and Simon Schaffer (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1989), pp. 119–47.

9 Thomas Birch, The History of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 1 (London: A. Millar, 1756). From now on: Birch, History.

10 J. A. Bennett, The Mathematical Science of Christopher Wren, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 73. Micrographia, sig. g2r notes that Wren's ‘draughts do now make one of the Ornaments of that great Collection of Rarities in the King's Closet’.

11 Stephen Wren, Parentalia: or, Memoirs of the Family of the Wrens […] (London, 1750), pp. 210–11.

12 Birch, History, pp. 21–2 (8 May 1661).

13 Birch, History, pp. 54, 88, 114, 117–8, 212–3, 217–9, 226–7, 234, 269. On ‘generation’, see Domenico Bertoloni Meli, Mechanism, Experiment, Disease. Marcello Malpighi and Seventeenth-Century Anatomy (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 2011), pp. 208–233; Matthew Cobb, Generation. The Seventeenth-Century Scientists Who Unraveled the Secrets of Sex, Life and Growth (New York & London: Bloomsbury, 2006).

14 Birch, History, pp. 22–4 (see also p. 25, 29).

15 The Record of the Royal Society of London, Printed by The Royal Society of London 1912³, p. 119. As an example of the bookish penchants of the Society’s members, peruse Hooke’s library at http://www.hookesbooks.com/, ed. by William Poole, Felicity Henderson and Yelda Nasifoglu.

16 See Everett Mendelsohn, ‘Philosophical Biology vs Experimental Biology: Spontaneous Generation in the Seventeenth Century’, Actes du XII congress interenational d’histoire de sciences, Vol. 1-B (1971), 201–26; Daryn Lehoux, Creatures Born of Mud and Slime: The Wonder and Complexity of Spontaneous Generation (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 2017).

17 Aristotle, Generation of Animals, 3.11, 762a19-26.

18 Birch, History, p. 281 (21 July 1663), 288 (29 July), 294 (19 August).

19 Birch, History, p. 301 (2 September 1663).

20 Micrographia, pp. 190–1.

21 Royal Society Archives, Cl.P/15i/2, 3r-4v, here: 3r. For a discussion of Willughby and a transcription of his paper, see Brian Ogilvie, ‘Willughby on Insects’, in Virtuoso By Nature. The Scientific Worlds of Francis Willughby FRS (1635–1672), ed. by Tim Birkhead (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2016), pp. 335–59.

22 Birch, History, pp. 117–8 (22 October 1662).

23 Robert Boyle, The Sceptical Chymist […] (London: Cadwell, 1661), p. 123. For an overview of Boyle’s stance on seeds, see Peter Anstey, ‘Boyle on Seminal Principles’, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in the History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 33, No. 4 (2002), 597–630.

24 Henry Power, Experimental Philosophy (London: John Martin & John Allestry, 1664), p. 21. For Henshaw’s observations, see Philosophical Transactions, 1 (1665), No. 3, 33–6, here: 35–6. The contemporary James Tyrrell (1642–1718) certainly thought that Henshaw’s observations had shown ‘the production of Flyes from May dew’. See Trinity College, Dublin, MS 454, 100r.

25 Birch, History, pp. 118 (experiments proposed in October 1662); 212–3, 217 (continued in March 1663); 238 (May & Evelyn); 266–7 (June).

26 In May 1665, Boyle drew up another ‘catalogue of experiments relating to spontaneous generation’. Again, they yielded no results. See Birch, History (Vol. 2), pp. 48–9.

27 For the full list of observations, see John Harwood, ‘Rhetoric and Graphics in Micrographia’, in Robert Hooke. New Studies, ed. by Michael Hunter and Simon Schaffer, (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1989), pp. 119–47, here: 124–5.

28 Micrographia, pp. 205–6.

29 Birch, History (Vol. 2), p. 48 (17 May 1665).

30 Harvey seems to have accepted spontaneous generation. See his: Exercitationes de Generatione Animalium […], (London: L. Pulleyn, 1651), p. 122: ‘Quaedam igitur animalia sua sponte nascuntur, ex materia sponte, vel casu concocta; ut Aristoteles videtur assere … Apes, crabrones, papiliones … casu orta’. For a more ambiguous passage, see p. 112

31 Micrographia, p. 206.

32 Micrographia, p. 214.

33 Henry Power, Experimental Philosophy (London: John Martin & John Allestry, 1664), Observations 7, 12–18.

34 See Hooke’s letter to Boyle on 3 July 1663: ‘There is very little in Dr. Power’s microscopical observations but what you have since observed’. From: Michael Hunter, Antonio Clericuzio and Lawrence Principe (eds.), The Correspondence of Robert Boyle, Vol. 2 (1662–5) (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2001), p. 98.

35 Micrographia, p. 206.

36 Micrographia, p. [254].

37 Micrographia, pp. 213–4.

38 Micrographia, p. 214.

39 Micrographia, p. 205.

40 Micrographia, pp. 205–6.

41 Micrographia, p. 207. For the mite-worm reference: p. 178.

42 Micrographia, p. 214.

43 Hooke’s use of the term ‘mite’ shows its broad semantic range: ‘wandring mites’, ‘cheese-Mites’, ‘mite-Worms’ as well as the ‘small Vine-Mites’ of observation no. 56, Of a small Creature hatch’d on a Vine.

44 Micrographia, pp. 214–5.

45 Micrographia, p. 207.

46 Thomas Case, The Morning Exercise Methodiz’d […] Sermons, by several Ministers of the City of London […] at Giles in the Field, May 1659, (London: E.M. for Ralph Smith, 1659), p. 136.

47 Note that in this period ‘prime parent’ stood for either Adam or Eve (but usually the former); ‘prime parents’ stood for the couple. For alternating usages, see, e.g. John Gaule, Sapientia Justificata […] (London: N. Paris & Thomas Dring, 1657), p. 19, 43; Richard Turnbull, An Exposition upon the Canonicall Epistle of Saint James […], (London: John Windet, 1592), 7v, 219v, 241v; Edward Gosynhyll, The Prayse of all Women […], London? 1542, [5v]. The Latinate counterpart primus parens had long been in use since the Middle Ages.

48 For environmental theories of human difference and their varying contexts see (in chronological order): Nicolàs Wey Gòmez, The Tropics of Empire. Why Columbus Sailed South to the Indies, in Transformations: Studies in the History of Science and Technology, ed. by Jed Z. Buchwald (Cambridge, MA & London: MIT Press, 2008), pp. 69–92; Margaret Hodgen, Early Anthropology in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1964), pp. 207–94; Joyce Chaplin, ‘Natural Philosophy and an Early Racial Idiom in North America: Comparing Indian and English Bodies’, The William and Mary Quarterly, 54, No. 1 (1997), 229–52; Rhodri Lewis, ‘William Petty’s Anthropology: Religion, Colonialism, and the Problem of Human Diversity’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 74, No. 2 (2011), 261–88, esp. 273–84.

49 Micrographia, p. 206.

50 Compare: Francesco Redi, Esperienze Intorno alla Generazione degl’ Insetti […], edited with an introduction by Walter Bernardi, (Florence: Giunti, 1996), pp. 86–9, 91. And: Jan Swammerdam, Historia Insectorum Generalis, ofte, Algemeene Verhandeling van de Bloedeloose Dierkens […], (Utrecht: Meinard van Dreunen, 1669), pp. 56–168 & appended ‘Verclaringe ofte Uitlegginge, van de vier Orderen der veranderingen’. For Swammerdam’s context, see Eric Jorink, ‘Snakes, Fungi and Insects. Otto von Marseus van Schrieck, Johannes Swammerdam and the Theory of Spontaneous Generation’, in Zoology in Early Modern Culture: Intersections of Science, Theology, Philology, and Political Religious Education, ed. by Karl Enenkel and Paul Smith (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2014), pp. 197–234, esp. 214–28. For Redi’s, see Paula Findlen, ‘Controlling the Experiment: Rhetoric, Court Patronage and the Experimental Method of Francesco Redi’, History of Science, 31, No. 1 (1993), 35–64. See further: Domenico Bertoloni Meli, Mechanism, Experiment, Disease, pp. 179–86, 195–201.

51 Micrographia, p. 214.

52 Readings of the Micrographia that identify the book as ‘an apologetic and as a kind of experimental philosophy’ or ‘a prescriptive model … for the safe and reliable attainment of knowledge’ need to be complicated. Cf., respectively, Michael Aaron Dennis, ‘Graphic Understanding: Instruments and Interpretation in Robert Hooke’s Micrographia’, Science and Context, 3 (1989), 309–64, here: 312; Adrian Johns, The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), p. 428.

53 Anthony Grafton, What was History? The Art of History in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 146–65; William Poole, The World Makers: Scientists of the Restoration and the Search for the Origins of the Earth (Oxford: Peter Lang Ltd, 2010), pp. 75–87.

54 Birch, History, p. 242 (20 May 1663).

55 Micrographia, p. 193.

56 Micrographia, pp. 193–4.

57 Among the Society’s inventions in the years before the Micrographia was published, Thomas Sprat’s History of the Royal Society […], (London: J. Martyn, 1667), p. 247 records ‘several new kinds of Pendulum Watches for the Pocket, wherein the motion is regulated, by Springs or Weights’. Hooke later claimed that he had invented the pocket watch with a spring attached to the balance wheel, sparking a famous priority dispute with Christiaan Huygens. See Richard Waller, The Posthumous Works of Robert Hooke […] (London: Sam Smith & Benj. Walford, 1705), pp. v–vii; Robert Hooke, Lectures De Potentia Restitutiva, or Of Spring (London: John Martyn, 1678), p. 6; Rob Iliffe, ‘‘‘In the Warehouse”: Privacy, Property and Priority in the early Royal Society’, History of Science, 30 (1992), 29–68.

58 Left: ‘Watch in the form of a Lesser George’, built in ca. 1600 by Nicholas Vallin, a leading London clockmaker. Middle: ‘Clock watch’, built in London in ca. 1610 by Michael Nouwen. Right: ‘Watch’, built in ca. 1640 by Edward East, a co-founder of the London Clockmakers’ Company.

59 Micrographia, p. 195.

60 Micrographia, p. 194.

61 Micrographia, p. 195.

62 Birch, History, 234 (6 May 1663).

63 Micrographia, p. 195. Hooke mentions ‘several particulars’ of both ‘gnats’ (without specification), from which he deduces their sexes.

64 Micrographia, p. 204.

65 Ibid.

66 Micrographia, pp. 204–5.

67 Otherwise, a textual authority for winged ants was: Georg Margrave & Willem Piso, Historia Naturalis Brasiliae (Antwerp: Johannes de Laet, 1648), p. 252: ‘Reperitur hic Formica volans, unum digitum longa’. Hooke knew this work (see Micrographia, p. 188.)

68 John Wilkins, An Essay Towards a Real Character, and a Philosophical Language (London, Sa. Gellibrand & John Martyn, 1668), sig. b2r. From now on: Wilkins, Essay. For the Essay, its context and significance, see Rhodri Lewis, Language, Mind and Nature: Artificial Languages in England from Bacon to Locke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

69 For the acknowledgement of Ray and Willughby, see Wilkins, Essay, sig. c1r. Furthermore, see Rhodri Lewis, Language, Mind and Nature, pp. 151–3.

70 Wilkins, Essay, p. 22, 126. See further: Rhodri Lewis, Language, Mind and Nature, pp. 160–3.

71 This idea of ‘species’ was already present in William Harvey, who wrote that (non-insect) animals come ‘from one beginning (namely, from the same species), [and] follow one another to all eternity’. See his: Exercitationes de Generatione Animalium [...], (London: L. Pulleyn, 1651), p. 122: ‘sanguinea terrestria, vel aquitilia, quae ab univoco principio (nempe ab eadem specie) aeternitatem consequuntur’. Later, John Ray famously defined a species of plant as all those individuals which ‘arise from the seed of the same plant’ See: John Ray, Historia Plantarum [...], Vol. 1, (London: Maria Clark, 1686), p. 40: ‘… ex eiusdem … plantae seminae oriuntur.’

72 Richard Waller, The Posthumous Works of Robert Hooke […] (London: Sam Smith & Benj. Walford, 1705), pp. 327–8.

73 Wilkins, Essay, p. 164.

74 This view was later summarized in: Matthew Hale, The Primitive Origination of Mankind […] (London: William Godbid for William Shrowsberry, 1677), pp. 199–203.

75 For the whole defense: Wilkins, Essay, pp. 162–8.

76 Wilkins, Essay, pp. 164–5.

77 Micrographia, p. [254].

78 Micrographia, pp. 215–6.

79 See Observations no. 37, Of the Feet of Flies, and several other Insects (pp. 169–72); no. 38, Of the Structure and motion of the Wings of Flies (172–5); no. 39, Of the Eyes and Head of a Grey drone-Fly, and of several other creatures (175–80); no. 40, Of the Teeth of a Snail (180–1).

80 Micrographia, pp. 177–8. See, e.g. in 1700, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek’s microscopic dissection of a lobster’s compound eye, later published in his Epistolae ad Societatem Regiam Anglicam […] (Leiden: John Arnold Langerak, 1719), pp. 181–3 & figs. 2–3.

81 Micrographia, p. 178.

82 Micrographia, p. [253].

83 See ‘frame’ in OED.

84 Micrographia, p. 208.

85 Although note: Hooke certainly used the word ‘convert’ in all other contexts to denote dynamic transformation: when, for example, he spoke of transmutation, of iron that was ‘converted’ into steel or wood into charcoal. See Micrographia, p. 51, 106.

86 The phylum Arthropoda has several subphyla which, in turn, are subdivided into various classes, some of which we now identify as insects (e.g. gnats, flies, ants), arachnids (e.g. spiders, mites, pseudoscorpions) and malacostracans (e.g. crabs, lobsters, shrimps). Hooke’s expansive definition of ‘insects’ includes all of these creatures and foreshadows Linnaeus’ (equally expansive) insecta in the Systema Naturae (1735; 1758). For the latter, see Mary Winsor, ‘The Development of Linnaean Insect Classification’, Taxon, 25, No. 1 (1976), 56–67, here: 62–3. For the insect classification that was conventional in Hooke’s time, see Brian Ogilvie, ‘Beasts, Birds, and Insects. Folkbiology and Early Modern Classification of Insects’, in Wissenschaftsgeschichte und Geschichte des Wissens im Dialog – Connecting Science and Knowledge, ed. by Kaspar von Greyerz, Silvia Flubacher and Philipp Senn (Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2013), pp. 295–316.

87 See Micrographia, p. 171, 178.

88 The pincers (chelicerae) on these creatures are not (!) Hooke’s fabrications. There are ‘spiders’ that have such pincers, namely, Opiliones, an order of arachnids, commonly known as ‘harvestmen’. Hooke’s specimen is such a harvestman, of the genus Leiobunum, and most likely of the species Rotundum. See Mark Jervis, ‘A zoologist’s perspective on Robert Hooke’s Micrographia (1665) studies of marine and terrestrial invertebrates, and his contemplations on invertebrate ‘generation’ and mutability’, Journal of Natural History, 48, No. 23–4 (2014), 1375–411, here: 1389. Let me also mention that Pseudoscorpiones, another order of arachnids, have exactly the pincers at their mouths as shown by the ‘crab-like insect’ above. Hooke’s pseudoscorpion probably is the Cheiridium Museorum and he has been credited with the earliest British record of this species. See Gerald Legg and Richard Jones, Pseudoscorpions (Arthropoda; Arachnida): Keys and Notes for the Identification of the Species (Leiden: Brill, 1988), p. 91.

90 Micrographia, pp. 199–200.

89 This male L. Rotundum was photographed in Wyre Forest, Worcestershire, England on 17 October 2009. The Leiobunum that Hooke presented to the Royal Society centuries earlier, it was noted, was ‘standing out upon a stem’ (Birch, History, p. 294).

91 Micrographia, p. 200. N.B.: Hooke had actually weighed air with respect to water in February 1664. See Royal Society Archives, Cl.P/20/25, 42r.

92 Micrographia, p. 199.

93 This type of thinking differentiates Hooke from his fellow naturalists. Observations on Hooke’s ‘Air-Crab’ were published 13 years after the Micrographia by the Society’s arachnologist, or ‘spider man’, Martin Lister. See Lister’s Historiae Animalium Angliae Tres Tractatus. Unus de Araenis […] (London: John Martyn, 1678), pp. 95–9. Lister translates and quotes Hooke’s observations, yet leaves them without comment, only describing the spider’s body and habitat. Lister’s depiction of it (table 1, fig. 36) shows no anatomical detail. Earlier in 1668, John Ray had also mentioned the spider to Lister in a letter. For this, see Anna Marie Roos (ed.), The Correspondence of Dr. Martin Lister (1639–1712). Volume One: 1662–1677 (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2015), p. 193.

94 Micrographia, p. 171.

95 Micrographia, p. 212.

96 Ibid.

97 Micrographia, p. 214.

98 Micrographia, p. 214, 205.

99 Micrographia, p. 171.

100 Ibid.

101 See Robert Boyle, A Disquisition about the Final Causes of Natural Things […] (London: H.C. for John Taylor, 1688), esp. pp. 15–9, 56–61, 65–70, 146–50. And: John Ray, The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of Creation (London: R. Harbin for William Innys, 1717), pp. 139–56. For discussion, see Jessica Riskin, The Restless Clock. A History of the Centuries-Long Argument over What Makes Living Things Tick (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 2016), pp. 84–7.

102 Galen, On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body, transl. by Margaret Tallmadge May, Vol. 2, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 1968), pp. 463–503. See further: Daryn Lehoux, What did the Romans know? An Inquiry into Science and Worldmaking (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), pp. 116–21.

103 Birch, History (Vol. 4), p. 141, 143 (12 April 1682).

104 See, e.g. Micrographia, p. 123, 159, 165, 183, 189, 212.

105 For an overview, see Brian Ogilvie, ‘Order of Insects: Insect Species and Metamorphosis between Renaissance and Enlightenment’, in The Life Sciences in Early Modern Philosophy, ed. by Ohad Nachtomy and Justin Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 222–46.

106 Micrographia, pp. 187–8.

107 Birch, History, p. 297 (26 August 1663).

108 Micrographia, p. 187

109 Micrographia, p. 178.

110 Richard Waller, The Posthumous Works of Robert Hooke […] (London: Sam Smith & Benj. Walford, 1705), pp. 279–450. From now on: Posthumous Works. I do not follow Waller’s faulty dating of these lectures, but that given by Rhoda Rappaport, ‘Hooke on Earthquakes: Lectures, Strategy and Audience’, The British Journal for the History of Science, 19, No. 2 (1986), 129–46, here: 143–6.

111 On Hooke’s ‘club’, see William Poole, ‘The Genesis Narrative in the Circle of Robert Hooke and Francis Lodwick’, in Scripture and Scholarship in Early Modern England, ed. by Ariel Hessayon and Nicholas Keene (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), pp. 41–57; on La Peyrère, see Anthony Grafton, ‘Isaac La Peyrère and the Old Testament’, in idem, Defenders of the Text: The Traditions of Scholarship in an Age of Science (1991), pp. 204–13; on pre-adamism, see William Poole, ‘Seventeenth-century Preadamism, and an Anonymous English Preadamist’, in The Seventeenth Century, 19 (2004), 1–35.

112 London Metropolitan Archives, CLC/495/MS01768, 44v. (The date is 18 December 1675). Cf. Henry Robins & Walter Adams, The Diary of Robert Hooke, M.A., M.D., F.R.S. 1672–1680 […] (London: Taylor & Francis, 1935), p. 202.

113 Posthumous Works, p. 327 (before 15 September 1668).

114 Posthumous Works, p. 435. (29 May 1689).

115 Posthumous Works, pp. 379–80 (4 January 1688).

116 For an example of the human degeneration thesis, see John Ray, Miscellaneous Discourses concerning the Dissolution and Changes of the World […] (London: Samuel Smith at the Prince’s Arms in St. Paul’s Churchyard, 1692), pp. 42–3, p. 103. For the Fall of Man, see Philip Almond, Adam and Eve in Seventeenth-Century Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press:, 1999), pp. 20–32; William Poole, Milton and the Idea of the Fall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Peter Harrison, The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). For Hooke on the Fall, see Micrographia, sig. a1r, b2r-v.

117 Posthumous Works, 380 (4 January 1688).

118 See Nehemiah Grew, Musaeum Regalis Societatis, or A Catalogue & Description of the Natural and Artificial Rarities belonging to the Royal Society and preserved at Gresham College (London: W. Rawlins, 1681), pp. 253–65.

119 Posthumous Works, p. 342 (8 December 1686 to 19 January 1687).

120 Posthumous Works, p. 284 (before 15 September 1668). See also Hooke’s ‘Twelfth Proposition’ at 333–4, 337–8. Ironically, Hooke’s opponent Robert Plot would later (in The Natural History of Oxfordshire (1677), misattribute the fossil-bone of a Megalosaurus to ancient Giants and Titans. For this, see Justin Delair and William Sarjeant, ‘The Earliest Discoveries of Dinosaurs’, Isis, 66, No. 1 (1975), 4–25, here: 6–7. For more on giants in the early modern imagination of the past, see Antoine Schnapper, ‘Persistance de gèants’, Annales. Historie, Sciences Sociales, 41, No. 1 (1986), 177–200; Walter Stephens, Giants in Those Days: Folklore, Ancient History and Nationalism (Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press, 1989).

121 Richard Waller, the editor, drew the left image after a trip to Keynsham in 1686 and then inserted it into the posthumous publication of Hooke’s 1668 lecture. Keynsham’s ‘snail stones’ (ammonite fossils) were already explicitly singled out by Hooke in Posthumous Works, p. 284 (Hooke’s 1668 lecture) and in Micrographia, p. 109. For specifics, see Sachiko Kusukawa, ‘Drawings of fossils by Robert Hooke and Richard Waller’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society, 67, No. 2 (2013), 123–38, here: 125–6 (incl. fn. 10), 132–3.

122 Posthumous Works, p. 321 (before 15 September 1668).

123 Posthumous Works, p. 285 (before 15 September 1668). See further: Paolo Rossi, The Dark Abyss of Time: The History of the Earth and the History of Nations from Hooke to Vico, transl. by Lydia G. Cochrane (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), pp. 1–88, esp. 12 ff. More recent work on the history of fossils has emphasized their theological and alchemical dimensions. For these, respectively, see William Poole, The World Makers: Scientists of the Restoration and the Search for the Origins of the Earth (Oxford: Peter Lang Ltd, 2010), pp. 115–34. And: Anna Marie Roos, ‘Salient Theories in the Fossil Debate in the early Royal Society’, in Controversies within the Scientific Revolution, ed. by Marcelo Dascal and Victor Boantza (Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2012), pp. 151–70.

124 Posthumous Works, p. 56. See also p. 23: ‘The History of Sea Insects, compar’d with Terrestrial and Aerial’. A convincing case for a 1666 dating of A General Scheme (which stretches across Posthumous Works, pp. 1–70) was made by Mary Hesse, ‘Hooke’s Philosophical Algebra’, Isis, 57, No. 1 (1966), 67–83, here: 68.

125 Posthumous Works, p. 327 (before 15 September 1668).

126 Posthumous Works, pp. 290–1. See also p. 298, 328 (before 15 September 1668).

127 Hooke later claimed to have already argued for England’s prior submersion under water in 1664 and 1665. See his: Lectures De Potentia Restitutiva, or Of Spring (London: John Martyn, 1678), pp. 48–9. For the Aristotelian origins of this view, see most recently: Ivano dal Prete, ‘“Being the World Eternal … ”: The Age of the Earth in Renaissance Italy’, Isis, 105, No. 2 (2014), 292–317. And: William Poole, The World Makers: Scientists of the Restoration and the Search for the Origins of the Earth (Oxford: Peter Lang Ltd, 2010), pp. 95–114.

128 Posthumous Works, p. 348 (26 January 1687). See p. 339, for Hooke on the ‘Characteristicks’ of animals.

129 Birch History, p. 316 (November 1663).

130 Posthumous Works, p. 313 (before 15 September 1668).

131 Micrographia, pp. 109–12.

132 These drawings are printed in: Posthumous Works, 283–6 (Tabs. I–II, IV–V). For discussion, see Sachiko Kusukawa, ‘Drawings of Fossils by Robert Hooke and Richard Waller’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society, No. 2 (2013), 123–38.

133 In the 1668 lecture Hooke acknowledged ‘Crabbs’ among the fossils he had considered. See: Posthumous Works, p. 293.

134 Posthumous Works, p. 341 (8 December 1686 to 19 January 1687). See also: 433.

135 Posthumous Works, p. 408 (15 February 1688). See also: 410. One of the many books that Hooke owned that discussed these floods (i.e. of Ogyges and Deucalion) was: Walter Raleigh, The History of the World (London: Walter Burre, 1614), pp. 99–103.

136 Posthumous Works, p. 411 (29 February 1688).

137 Posthumous Works, p. 335 (8 December 1686 to 19 January 1687).

138 Thomas Sprat, History of the Royal Society […] (London: John Martyn, 1667), p. 251.

139 Wilkins, Essay, p. 62, 163.

140 For a further contrast between Hooke and Wilkins, see William Poole, ‘Heterodoxy and Sinology. Isaac Vosius, Robert Hooke and the early Royal Society’s Use of Sinology’, in The Intellectual Consequences of Religious Heterodoxy 1600–1750, ed. by Sarah Mortimer and John Robertson (Leiden: Brill, 2012), pp. 135–54, here: 151.

141 Micrographia, p. 207.

142 Ibid.

143 Ibid.

144 See Brian Ogilvie, ‘Order of Insects: Insect Species and Metamorphosis between Renaissance and Enlightenment’, in The Life Sciences in Early Modern Philosophy, ed. by Ohad Nachtomy and Justin Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 222–46.

145 Micrographia, sig. a2v.

146 Micrographia, p. 207.