Acarus galvanicus

A diligent scientist with a passion for electricity, Andrew Crosse was known as the "thunder and lightning" man around his home in the Quantock Hills of Somerset, where he also held a seat as an MP.

In 1836, Crosse tried to create artificial crystals by dripping a chemical solution through an electrified stone from Mount Vesuvius. After two weeks, Crosse noticed tiny white spots on the stone, which was submerged in diluted hydrochloric acid. On the 18th day, filaments emerged from the spots and by the 26th, the spots had taken on a startling form. "Each figure," wrote Crosse, "assumed the form of a perfect insect, standing erect on a few bristles which formed its tail." On the 28th day the insects began to twitch their legs. Within weeks, a hundred had formed and, rescued from the water, scuttled across his workbench in search of shelter.

The creatures were identified as mites of the genus Acarus, though it was initially thought they might represent a new species - perhaps Acarus crossii or galvanicus. Wishing to experiment further before making an announcement, Crosse tried to keep his discovery quiet. Word soon got out and he found himself labelled "a reviler of our holy religion," "a disturber of the peace of families," and denounced as a Frankenstein-like madman.

He had some surprising defenders. In 1837 the electrical pioneer Michael Faraday told the Royal Institution that he too had observed the appearance of mites during some of his experiments - though he didn't think that they were born of electricity.

Nor, for that matter, did Crosse. "I have never ventured an opinion as to the cause of their birth, and for a very simple reason - I was unable to form one. The most simple solution was that they arose from ova deposited by insects floating in the atmosphere," he wrote in 1837.

Crosse would have been working in homely conditions, and it seems most likely that his mites were of the common dust or cheese varieties, whose eggs had contaminated his equipment before the experiments began. At least one fellow investigator, William Henry Weekes of Sandwich, repeated and expanded upon Crosse's work, noting that the number of mites was proportionate to the amount of carbon in the mixture, but his findings attracted little attention.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTEoKyaqpSerq96wqikaKuTnrKvr8RoaWloY2S6osWOaWhoq5Oesq%2BvxGefop%2BYmr%2BmsNScmK2hn6M%3D