114

A DISCOURSE

a physician of Denmark , that a handful or two of small Oak buttons,mingled with oats, and given to horses which are black, will, in a fewdays eating, alter their colour to a fine dapple grey ; and this he attributesto the vitriol abounding in this tree 1 .

To conclude, upon serious meditation of the various uses of this andother trees, we cannot but take notice of the admirable mechanismof vegetables in general, as in particular in this species, that, by thediversity of percolations, and strainers, and by mixtures, as it wereof divine chymistry, various concoctions, &c. the sap should be so greenon the indented leaves, so lustily esculent for hardier and rustic constitu-tions in the fruit; so flat and pallid in the atramental galls ; and, haply,so prognostic in the apple ; so suberous in the bark; (for even the cork-tree is but a coarser Oak;) so ouzy in the tanner’s pit; and, in thatsubduction, so wonderfully specific in corroborating the entrails andbladder, reins, loins, back, &c. which are all but the gifts and qualities,with many more, that these robust sons of the earth afford us; and that,in other specifics, even the most despicable and vulgar Elder impartsto us in its rind, leaves, buds, blofsoms, berries, ears, pith, bark, &c.which hint may also carry our remarks upon all the varieties of shape,leaf, seed, fruit, timber, grain, colour, and all those other forms thatphilosophers have enumerated; but which were here too many for us torepeat.

1 The wood contains no vitriol; neither ought any credit to be given to the experimentVirgil in the fourth Eclogue mentions something of the same kind, but it shouldbe considered that he there speaks as a poet, and not as as a philosopher;

Nec varias discet mentiri lana colores:

Ipse sed in pratis aries jam suave rubentiMurice, jam croceo mutabit vellera luto.-Sponte sua sandyx pascentes restiet agnos,