Resuscitation of Plants and Animals from their Ashes, 297 



tahiiiig glass vessel. The salts in this 

 suspension, being set at liberty, dispose 

 themselves spontaneously and mechani- 

 cally into order, placing themselves in 

 the same situation, and forming the 

 same figure which nature originally gave 

 them ; they assume the real order and 

 arrangement of the plant itself. Natu- 

 rally retaining the inclination to become 

 what they were, they follow the im- 

 pulse received, each original corpuscle 

 of salt returning to its primitive deter- 

 mination ; those appertaining to the foot 

 of the plant convey themselves thither, 

 and assume their proper place ; and 

 those which composed the summit of 

 the stem, the branches, leaves, and. 

 flowers, perform the same |)art." 



But our renowned and sifmpaiheti« 

 Sir Kenelm Digby leaves all his learned 

 brethren at an immense distance, as hia 

 noble method of supplying a fish-market 

 Avill fully evince. As to the reproduc-* 

 tion of plants, he held it easy and cheap, 

 and in no degree comparable witli hia 

 successful experiments of the resuscita- 

 tion of animals from their ashes, for on* 

 of which he gives the following as hi^ 

 usual process. "Take some cray-fisb, 

 and wash fhem well, to remove all grit- 

 tiness ; boil them two hours in a good 

 quantity of rain water. Keep this de- 

 coction. Put the cray-fish into ai^ 

 earthen limbeck, and distil them until 

 nothing rises any longer : preserve thi^ 

 liquor. Calcine the residuum at th« 

 bottom of the limbeck, and reduce it to 

 ashes in a reverberatory ; extract the salt 

 from these ashes with your first decoc- 

 tion ; filtrate the salt, and deprive it of 

 its superfluous humidity. Upon th^ 

 salt that remains fixed, pour the liquor 

 that you draw by distillation, and put 

 it into a moist place, for example a 

 dung-iiill, that it may putrify. Such 'n 

 my metliod ; and in a few days I liavQ 

 seen little cray-fish, no bigger than mil- 

 let seeds, moving up and down in that 

 liquor. They must be fed with ox- 

 blood, until they come to be as big as a 

 liazlo-nut, and then are to be put into 3 

 wooden trougli, filled with river water 

 and ox blood ; the water to be changed 

 every three days. By such means cray- 

 fish may be had as large as you ))kase.'^ 

 This is an undoubted proof of Sir 

 Kenelm's superiority over all competi- 

 tion, in as much as solid, living, and edi- 

 ble substances are superior to ghosts 

 and shadows, which some of the above- 

 cited experimenters modestly acknow- . 

 ledge their resuscitations to be. But , 

 jBojle d^tavTivd ('Ihitamin, Ph]/siolo- 



IS] 6.] 



•ver conjured up the ghosts of a forest 

 of pines, oaks, elms, and other trees, of 

 which he knew not the names. This he 

 ^fleeted by mixing, secundum artem, an 

 equal quantity of potash and sal-aiimio- 

 niac, from the volatile salts of which 

 arose specimens of the original trees, 

 the wood of which had been used in the 

 manufacture of the potassia. He sub- 

 joins the following reflection, "There is 

 «ot a more faithful image in the world 

 of the resurrection of the dead, and I am 

 persuaded that nature and art can never 

 offer to our eyes a more divine specta- 

 cle. All the learned speak of it alike, 

 and each of them is astonished with ad- 

 miration." 



Marsenne calcined a plant between 

 two crucibles, and, extracting its salts, 

 sowed them in prepared earth, and 

 tlicnce s|)rang up an immense number 

 of the same plants. And Hamieinannus, 

 in bis Nov. 3Iethod. Cognes. Sitnp. 

 Vegetal), thence draws this conclu- 

 sion — Salem plavtcc, si terra puris- 

 sima vueverit, statim ille in earn plan- 

 taiii, ex qua extractus fuerat, repuUu- 

 iabit. 



Kircher, it seems, had been sceptical 

 as to the success of these experiments, 

 Hntil the year 1657, when, at Rome, he 

 made his successful essa}', by the resus- 

 citation of a rose from its ashes, which 

 rose he preserved, hermetically sealed, 

 in a long-necked phial, like a mattrass, 

 in his closet, during ten years. Scotus 

 the Jesuit, and afterwards Christina 

 queen of Sweden, who was a resident at 

 Kome, saw with enthusiastic admira- 

 tion this rose in the most beautiful 

 luxuriance and bloom, corked up, like 

 the devil Asmodeus, in a bottle ; and 

 which was afterwards released much in 

 the same manner as was that communi- 

 f ativc and social devil; for the phial was, 

 on a certain night, accidentally broken 

 to pieces. It is asserted, without the 

 Aiiallest hesitation, that they caused the 

 •pirit of this rose to rise fiom the grave 

 of its ashes, as often as they pleased, by 

 the application of a little heat. An ac- 

 count of this and other experiments 

 may be found in Kircher's works, with 

 a plate of the rose ; also a figure of the 

 ftiost or resuscitation of a spauow in a 

 bottle. 



Here we have a specimen of the phi- 

 losophic ratiocination of this learned 

 chemist — "The seminal virtue of every 

 compound body is concentered in its 

 aalts, and, as soon as heat puts them in 

 motion, they forthw ith ascend and circu- 

 late like a wiiirlv\'in(), around U)c coti- 

 WoNTHLV Mao, No. 2yo, 



