Robert Hooke
reviewed model context. Internal route is present in the reviewed page/model data for this record.
Scientific Plate
Engraving of a flea in Micrographia, 1665
A signature early microscopy image chosen to test plate-level rights divergence: the underlying book is Public Domain Mark, while this separately catalogued digital image is CC BY 4.0.
- Flea
- flea
- Pulex irritans Linnaeus, 1758
- Robert Hooke
- Engraving
- Microscopy
- Entomology
Close reading
Read the plate, not just its catalog terms
Wellcome’s catalog record identifies this flea engraving as Schem. XXIV in Robert Hooke’s Micrographia, 1665. The plate is a historical representation; the institution’s digital image is a later surrogate. The rights-reviewed Wellcome rendition is now localized below for the exercise, with its CC BY 4.0 credit and source kept visible.
Documentary source rendition — not a generated reconstruction
Inspect source ↗Hooke’s flea plate from Micrographia (1665), shown from the exact Wellcome digital-image rendition prepared by FND-007. No crop, rotation, sharpening, upscaling or AI reconstruction was applied by ICU.
Credit: Robert Hooke, Engraving of a flea in Micrographia, 1665. Wellcome Collection. CC BY 4.0. ICU prepared responsive derivatives by proportional downsize/encoding only.
A five-minute observation exercise
- Inspect the whole image first. Record the plate heading and one letter that you can actually read. Keep an illegible mark unresolved.
- Choose a small region near a leg or body outline. Describe the direction and density of its marks without assigning a function to them.
- Compare that region with a nearby region. Does the same mark seem to describe an edge, a surface or a dark area? Write a tentative interpretation and one detail that could challenge it.
- Follow the plate back to the work. Record whether an accompanying passage supports your interpretation. If you have not located the passage, write “text comparison pending” rather than treating the picture as its own explanation.
Historical representation and a modern comparison
The Royal Society’s digitization account describes Hooke’s oversight of the engraving process and places his flea beside a 2010 Mesolens image by Brad Amos. Use that comparison to examine how two depictions make structure visible. It is not evidence that the pictures show the same individual specimen, and the modern photograph is not another historical engraving.
What would a careful comparison say?
“These depictions invite comparison of the body outline and legs” is a starting question. “Every visible feature proves the same species” goes beyond it. Note the imaging method and source of each representation before describing similarities or differences. The modern image has its own credited rights holder; do not transfer the old work’s rights status to it.
A name is not a historical label
The inherited catalog keywords include Pulex irritans with a later taxonomic date. They are discovery terms, not a quotation from the 1665 plate and not a new species-level verification by ICU. Preserve “flea” as the source description and keep an exact modern identification qualified unless a relevant scientific source supports it.
For reuse, check the exact Wellcome digital item and its license, not just the date of the book. The existing ICU provenance record distinguishes image L0084699 and its attribution requirement from the underlying work. Any future local reproduction must retain its own source, credit and change notice.
Use the worked reading record to organize your findings. Compare the Merian exercise for a different question: when does placing organisms together support a claim about their relationship?
Evidence graph
Related routes from the canonical link graph.
These paths come from ASEU’s reviewed internal-link graph; their relationship labels and evidence basis remain explicit.
Entomology
reviewed model context. Internal route is present in the reviewed page/model data for this record.
Microscopy
reviewed model context. Internal route is present in the reviewed page/model data for this record.
Hooke’s flea: probable species, not a 1665 species label
reviewed term context. Shared reviewed search terms: flea · pulex irritans linnaeus 1758
Scientific Plate Archive
hierarchy parent. Typical user path to the containing ASEU hub.
Insecten — elephant beetle plate
reviewed model context. Internal route is present in the reviewed page/model data for this record.
Illustration of insect metamorphosis
reviewed model context. Internal route is present in the reviewed page/model data for this record.
Flea
reviewed model context. Internal route is present in the reviewed page/model data for this record.
Historical Insect Engravings
reviewed term context. Shared reviewed search terms: flea · engraving
Engraving
reviewed model context. Internal route is present in the reviewed page/model data for this record.
Micrographia
reviewed model context. Internal route is present in the reviewed page/model data for this record.
Trust boundary
What this page does not invent.
ASEU keeps historical claims, current scientific reconciliation, rights status, creator roles, provenance, image descent and editorial interpretation separate when the sources require them to stay separate.
R000067 is a parent integration, not a new ASEU research stage. It materializes the current canonical route and parent-participation contracts without declaring ASEU040 complete or expanding the source corpus.