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disposition of that year, according to the plenty or kinds of these productions. For if the putrefying juices of bodies bring forth plenty of flies and maggots, they give forth testimony of common corruption, and declare that the elements are full of the seeds of putrefaction, as the great number of caterpillars, gnats, and ordinary insects do also declare. If they run into spiders, they give signs of higher putrefaction, as plenty of vipers and scorpions are confessed to do; the putrefying materials producing animals of higher mischiefs, according to the advance and higher strain of corruption.6

3. Whether all plants have seed, were more easily deter minable, if we could conclude concerning hartstongue,7 fern, the capillaries, lunaria, and some others. But whether those little dusty particles, upon the lower side of the leaves, be seeds and seminal parts; or rather, as it is commonly conceived, excremental separations; we have not as yet been able to determine by any germination or univocal production from them when they have been sowed on purpose; but having set the roots of hartstongue in a garden, a year or two after, there came up three or four of the same plants, about two yards distance from the first. Thus much we observe, that they seem to renew yearly, and come not fully out till the plant be in its vigour; and, by the help of magnifying glasses, we find these dusty atoms to be round at first, and fully representing seeds, out of which at last proceed little mites almost invisible; so that such as are old stand open, as being emptied of some bodies formerly included; which, though discernable in hartstongue, is more notoriously discoverable in some differences of brake or fern.

But exquisite microscopes and magnifying glasses have at last cleared this doubt, whereby also long ago the noble Fredericus Cæsius beheld the dusts of polypody as big as peppercorns; and as Johannes Faber testifieth, made draughts on paper of such kind of seeds, as big as his glasses represented them and set down such plants under the classes of herbæ tergifatæ, as may be observed in his notable botanical tables.8

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6 For if the putrefying, &c.] See note at page 196.

7 hartstongue, lunaria.] Scolopendrium and moonwort.

3. Whether all plants have seeds, &c.] This doubt has been cleared

4. Whether the sap of trees runs down to the roots in winter, whereby they become naked and grow not; or whether they do not cease to draw any more, and reserve so much as sufficeth for conservation, is not a point indubitable. For we observe, that most trees, as though they would be perpetually green, do bud at the fall of the leaf, although they sprout not much forward until the spring and warmer weather approacheth; and many trees maintain their leaves all winter, although they seem to receive very small advantage in their growth. But [that] the sap doth powerfully rise in the spring, to repair that moisture whereby they barely subsisted in the winter, and also to put the plant in a capacity of fructification, he that hath beheld how many gallons of water may in a small time be drawn from a birch tree in the spring, hath slender reason to doubt.

For

5. That camphor eunuchates, or begets in men an impotency unto venery, observation will hardly confirm; and we have found it to fail in cocks and hens, though given for many days: which was a more favourable trial than that of Scaliger, when he gave it unto a bitch that was proud. the instant turgescence is not to be taken off, but by medicines of higher natures; and with any certainty but one way that we know, which notwithstanding, by suppressing that natural evacuation, may incline unto madness, if taken in the

summer.

6. In the history of prodigies we meet with many showers of wheat; how true or probable, we have not room to debate: : only thus much we shall not omit to inform; that

up by the laborious investigations of subsequent botanists. Sir James Smith, in speaking of the dorsal ferns, remarks-"The production of perfect germinating seeds, contained in capsules, and consequently produced by impregnated fertile flowers, is as clear in ferns as in mosses.

94. Whether the sap, &c.] Du Petit Thouars supposes that the sap begins to move at the extremities of the branches before it stirs at the roots, and this has been confirmed by experience. He theorises that the first budding in spring absorbs the sap from adjacent parts-which draw on those parts still further removed, and so on, till the whole mass of fluid is set in motion down to the roots. Dutrochet has formed a theory to account for the motion of vegetable fluids, by supposing galvanic action. See a curious account of his experiments and deductions, in Lindley's Introd. to Botany, p. 237, 238.

what was this year found in many places, and almost preached for wheat rained from the clouds, was but the seed of ivy-berries, which somewhat represent it; and though it were found in steeples and high places, might be conveyed thither, or muted out by birds; for many feed thereon, and in the crops of some we have found no less than three

ounces.

7. That every plant might receive a name according unto the disease it cureth, was the wish of Paracelsus, a way more likely to multiply empiricks than herbalists: yet what is practised by many is advantageous unto neither; that is, relinquishing their proper appellations to re-baptize them by the name of saints, apostles, patriarchs, and martyrs, to call this the herb of John, that of Peter, this of James or Joseph, that of Mary or Barbara. For hereby apprehensions are made additional unto their proper natures; whereon superstitious practices ensue, and stories are framed accordingly, to make good their foundations.

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8. We cannot omit to declare the gross mistake of many the nominal apprehension of plants. To instance but in few. An herb, there is, commonly called betonica1 Pauli, or Paul's betony; hereof the people have some conceit in reference to St. Paul; whereas, indeed, that name is derived from Paulus Ægineta, an ancient physician of Ægina, and is no more than speedwell, or fluellin. The like expectations are raised from herba trinitatis; which, notwithstanding, obtaineth that name from the figure of its leaves, and is one kind of liverwort, or hepatica. In milium solis, the epithet of the sun hath enlarged its opinion; which hath, indeed, no reference thereunto, it being no more than lithospermon, or grummel, or rather milium soler; which as Serapion from Aben Juliel hath taught us, because it grew plentifully in the mountains of Soler, received that appellation. In Jews' ears something is conceived extraordinary from the name, which is in propriety but fungus sambucinus, or an excrescence about the roots of elder, and concerneth not the nation of the Jews, but Judas Iscariot, upon a conceit he hanged on this tree; and is become a famous medicine in quinsies,2 sore throats,3

1 betonica.] Pauli Ægineta betonica; nobis est Flewellin.- Wr.

2 quinsies.] Lege quinancyes.-Wr.

3

sore throats.] A correspondent of the Gentleman's Magazine,

and strangulations, ever since. And so are they deceived in the name of horse-radish, horse-mint, bull-rush, and many more: conceiving therein some prenominal consideration, whereas, indeed, that expression is but a Grecism, by the prefix of hippos and bous; that is, horse and bull, intending no more than great.5 According whereto the great dock is called hippolapathum; and he that calls the horse of Alexander Great-head, expresseth the same which the Greeks do in Bucephalus.

9. Lastly, many things are delivered and believed of other plants, wherein at least we cannot but suspend. That there is a property in basil to propagate scorpions, and that by the smell thereof they are bred in the brains of men, is much advanced by Hollerius, who found this insect in the brains of a man that delighted much in that smell. Wherein beside that we find no way to conjoin the effect unto the cause assigned; herein the moderns speak but timorously, and some of the ancients quite contrarily. For according unto Oribasius, physician unto Julian, the Africans, men best experienced in poisons, affirm, whosoever hath eaten basil, although he be stung with a scorpion, shall feel no pain thereby which is a very different effect, and rather antidotally destroying, than seminally promoting its production. That the leaves of cataputia or spurge, being plucked upward or downward, respectively perform their operations by vol. lxxix. p. 38, relates a cure of sore throat by the use of sliced horseradish-chewed, and then passed to the root of the tongue.

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✦ strangulations.] Supple [inward].—Wr. i. e. lege inward strangulations.'

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great.] As is manifest in Hipposelinum, but especially in hippoäetos, the great eagle. Hippelaphus, hippomarathon, 'Iππóуνποι, Ἱππομόμηκες, &c.—Wr.

To this list may be added horse-ant, bullhead, bullfinch, &c. But the prefix does not always mean "great." Evelyn says, that the horsechestnut is so called because it cures horses and other cattle of coughs. And certainly both horse-chestnut and horse-radish are among the medicines used in farriery. Horse-beans, which are smaller than some other species, are so called because horses are fed with them :-horseleeches, probably because they fasten on the legs of horses while drinking. Horse-hoe, through drawn by horses because it is large, owes its prefix to the former, not to the latter circumstance. Why is the epithet, dog, prefixed to the scentless violet and the wild rose ?

Great-head.] Or, as I knew a gallant horse, whom his lord called Club.-Wr.

purge or vomit, as some have written, and old wives still do preach, is a strange conceit, ascribing unto plants positional operations, and after the manner of the loadstone; upon the pole? whereof, if a knife be drawn from the handle unto the point, it will take up a needle; but if drawn again from the point to the handle, it will attract it no more.

That cucumbers are no commendable fruits; that being very waterish, they fill the veins with crude and windy serosities; that containing little salt or spirit, they may also debilitate the vital acidity, and fermental faculty of the stomach, we readily concede; but that they should be so cold, as be almost poison by that quality, it will be hard to allow, without the contradiction of Galen ;* who accounteth them cold but in the second degree, and in that classis have most physicians placed them.8

we are taught by traAnd besides the pro

That elder-berries are poison, as dition, experience will unteach us. mises of Blochwitius, the healthful effects thereof will convict us.

That an ivy cup will separate wine from water, if filled with both, the wine soaking through, but the water still remaining, as after Pliny many have averred, we know not how to affirm; who making trial thereof, found both the liquors to soak indistinctly through the bowl.9

That sheep do often get the rot, by feeding in boggy grounds where ros solis groweth, seems beyond dispute.

*In his Anatomia Sambuci.

7 pole.] Upon an armed stone there are two poles, one northe and the other southe. Now as the back of the knife layd on both these, being drawn from the southe to the northe, imprints the magneticall vertue, soe drawne back againe takes itt off.-Wr.

8 That cucumbers, &c.] Added in the 2nd edition.

9to soak indistinctly, &c.] The fayling might bee by the weakenes of our racked wines.-Wr.

"Fixed or essential oils, or naphtha, and similar bodies, in mixture with water or aqueous solutions, in which they are not soluble, may be separated from the latter by a paper filter, previously moistened with pure water." Faraday's Chemical Manipulation, p. 241, No. 514.

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ros solis.] This plant (drosera rotundifolia and longifolia, the round and long leaved sundew, and the butterwort, and white rot, pinguicula vulgaris, and hydrocotyle), have been accused as the cause of dry rot; but they do not occur in every rotting soil. Various other causes have been assigned. But nothing seems so uniformly to occasion the

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