80

A DISCOURSE

Besides, we find that air is nearer of kin and affinity to water than wa-ter is to plants ; unlefs I should affirm that air itself were but a thinnerwater; for how else are those vines, and other trees of prodigious growth,maintained amongst the barren rocks and thirsty pumices, where rainsbut seldom fall, if not from this rorid air : not to insist again, that per-haps even these rocks themselves may once have sprung from liquid pa-rents ; and how little, even such as are exposed to continual showers, inother climates, abate of their magnitude, since we rather find them to in-crease; and that also the fruits and juices of vegetables seem to be but theconcretion of better concocted water, and may not only be converted intolignous and woody substance, (as the learned Dr. Beale has somewhereinstanced in a Discourse presented to you, and recorded in the PublicTransactions,) but is apt enough to petrify and become arrant stone.

Whatever then it be which the earth contributes, or whether it containuniversally a seminal virtue, so specified by the air, influences, and genius

of the Clime, as to make that a cinnamon-tree in Ceylon, which is but a

bay in England, is past my skill to determine: but it is to be observedwith no little wonder, what Monsieur Bernier, in his history of the Em-pire of the Mogul, affirms to us of a mountain there, which being onone side of it intolerably hot, produces Indian plants, and on the otheras intemperately cold, European and vulgar. Not here to pafs withoutnotice at least, what even the most exhausted mould will (to all appear-ance) produce spontaneously, when once it has been well exposed to theair and heavenly influences, if what springs up be not pofsibly from somevolatile rudiments and real seeds, transported by winds, higher than weusually place our experiments. But Porta tells us, with more confidence,that he took Earth from a most profound and dry place, and exposed iton such an eminence as to be out of reach even of the winds; but itproduced, it seems, only such plants as grow about Naples, and there-fore may be suspected.

To return then again from this digrefsion, and pursue our liquids;where there is good water there is commonly good Earth , and vice versa ;because it bridles and tempers the salts, abates the acidity and fiercenefsof the spirits, and imparts that useful ligature and connection to the-mould, without which it were of no use for vegetation. In the mean