find it will have obtained such a generous and masculine pregnancy,within that period, as to make good your highest expectations: And tothis belongs Sir Hugh Platt’s contrition, or philosophical grinding ofearth, which upon this exposure alone, without manure or soil, after thelike revolution of time, will, as he affirms, be able to receive an exoticplant from the farthest Indies, and cause all vegetables to prosper in themost exalted degree; and to speak magnificently with that industrious man,to bear their fruit as kindly with us as they do in their natural climates;and this Dr. Hunting pretends to have done in Holland. But a littleto abate of this, modestly we may say, that this culture (easy and simpleas it is) will be found effectually able to render the soil of a most extensivecapacity for the entertainment of foreign and uncommon plants. For toenumerate some of its perfections ; such as refuse dung and violent appli-cations, have here pure earth; and such as require aid, a mellow andrich mould, impregnated with all the blefsings which the influence ofthe heavens and efflorescence of the earth can contribute to it, fitted as itis for generation, (and yet so restrained from it) as greedily to receive thefirst seeds, which are committed to it, with a pafsion and fervency, as itwere, of animal love p . What high and sublime things are spoken moreupon this, I forbear to prosecute ; but in Sir Kenelm Digby ’s Discourseof Sympathetic Powder, he affirms, that the earth, in the years of repose,recovers its vigour by the attraction of the vital spirits which it receivesfrom the air and those superior irradiations which endow simple earthwith qualities promoting fermentation. And indeed, such a vegetativeactivity I have often observed in the bare exposure of some plants but fora few hours only, , as has raised my admiration, particularly in the aloeand other kinds of sedums, which, when to all appearance shrunk andshrivelled up, have filled themselves in a moment, set out in the airwhen a very few drops of water (at the time, that is, winter time) wouldcertainly have made them rot and turn to a mucilage, as to my cost I haveexperienced. And these ferments of the earth, by this amity and genialintercourse with the airfare innumerable, to concoct, digest, accelerateand restore; equal to, yea, beyond any artificial enforcements of dungs
P Virgil supposes the earth to be in this state, when he says,,Vere tumerit terra; et genitalia semina poscunt