Micrographia nova: sive nova & curiosa variorum minutorum corporum singularis cujusdam & noviter

A decorative horizontal ornament at the top of the page.

spots, faculae bright patches on the sun's surface, and companions are detected. In the last, microscopes are found; these represent a labyrinthine nature, and within this globe of the earth, a new microcosm small world, teeming everywhere with the smallest creatures, whose stunning structure deserves greater admiration than birds wandering through the air, beasts and animals walking on leaves and salt the sea, plowing and creeping; for things that are scarcely or hardly obvious to the sight, these microscopes exhibit not only as visible, but as a machine of admirable size.

I have included this last knowledge of microscopes and their effects in a booklet distinguished by the title Micrographia Nova New Micrography, and I have presented it to this most curious literate century. Moreover, I have inserted into this work of mine fifty and more most polished observations, with delineations of corpuscles and the smallest creatures, along with my newly invented microscope to which I owe these observations.

To whom, if not Your Roman Imperial Majesty, would this new microcosm small world, composed of stunning creatures and animals of the earth and air, submit itself with better right?