Microscope, it appears a large body, cover’d with a tough thick and bright reflecting skin very irregularly shrunk and pitted, insomuch that it is almost an impossibility to find two of them wrinkled alike, so great a variety may there be even in this little seed.
This, though it appear’d one of the most promising seeds for beauty to the naked eye, yet through the Microscope it appear’d but a rude mishapen seed, which I therefore drew, that I might thereby manifest how unable we are by the naked eye to judge of beauteous or less curious microscopical Objects; cutting some of them in sunder, I observ'd them to be fill'd with a greenish yellow pulp, and to have a very thick husk, in proportion to the pulp.
Observ. XXIX.Of the Seeds of Tyme.
THese pretty fruits here represented, in the 18. scheme, are nothing else, but nine several seeds of Tyme; they are all of them in differing posture, both as to the eye and the light: nor are they all of them exactly of the same shape, there being a great variety both in the bulk and figure of each seed; but they all agreed in this, that being look’d on with a Microscope, they each of them exactly resembled a Lemmon or Orange dry’d; and this both in shape and colour. Some of them are a little rounder, of the shape of an Orange, as A and B, they have each of them a very conspicuous part by which they were join'd to their little stalk, and one of them had a little piece of stalk remaining on; the opposite side of the feed, you may perceive very plainly by the Figure, is very copped and prominent, as is very usual in Lemmons, which prominencies are express'd in D, E and F.
They seem’d each of them a little creas'd or wrinckled, but E was very conspicuously furrow’d, as if the inward make of this seed had been somewhat like that of a Lemmon also, but upon dividing several seeds with a very sharp Pen-knife, and examining them afterward, I found their make to be in nothing but bulk differing from that of Peas, that is, to have a pretty thick coat, and all the rest an indifferent white pulp, which feem’d very close; so that it seems Nature does not very much alter her method in the manner of inclosing and preserving the vital Principle in the seed, in these very small grains, from that of Beans, Peas, &c.
The Grain affords a very pretty Object for the Microscope, namely, a Dish of Lemmons plac’d in a very little room; should a Lemmon or Nut be proportionably magnify’d to what this seed of Tyme is, it would make it appear as bigg as a large Hay-reek, and it would be no great wonder to see Homers Iliads, and Homer and all, cramm'd into such a Nut-shell. We may perceive even in these small Grains, as well as in greater, how curious and carefull Nature is in preserving the seminal principle of Vegetable bodies, in what delicate, strong and most convenient Cabinets she
