OK WATER AND WATERING PLANTS. 1^5 



fit and dispose them to be assumed by the water, and curried up 

 into the seed, or plant, for its formation and augment. 



There is no one but must observe how apt all sorts of soils are 

 to be wrought upon by moisture, how easily they liquate and 

 run with it ; and when these are drawn off, and have deserted the 

 lumps wherewith they were incorporated, those must moulder 

 immediately and fall asunder of course. 



The hardest stone, if it happened as it frequently does, to 

 have any salt intermixed with the sand of which it consists, upon 

 being exposed to a humid air, it in a short time dissolves and 

 crumbles all to pieces ; and much more will clodded earth and 

 clay, which is not near of so compact and solid a constitution as 

 stone is. 



The same way likewise it is that lime is serviceable in this affair. 

 The husbandman says of it, that it does not fatten but only mellow 

 the ground. By which they mean, that it does not contain any- 

 thing in itself that is of the same nature with the vegetable mould 

 or afford any matter fit for the formation of plants, but merely 

 softens and relaxes the earth, and by that means renders it more 

 capable of entering the seeds and vegetables set in it, in order 

 to their nourishment, than otherwise it would have been. 



The properties of lime are well known and how apt it is to be 

 put into a ferment and commotion by water ; nor can such com- 

 motion ever happen when lime is mixed with earth, however 

 hard and clodded that may be, without opening and loosening of 

 it. 



Observation 4. The plant is more or less nourished and aug- 

 mented in proportion, as the water in which it stands, contains a 

 greater or smaller quantity of proper terrestial matter in it. 



The truth of this proposition is so eminently discernable 

 through the whole process of these trials, that, he thinks no doubt 

 can be made of it. 



The mint in the glass C, was much of the same bulk and weight 

 with those in A and B ; but the water in which that was, being 

 river water, which was apparently more stored with terrestial 

 matter than the spring or rain water, wherein they stood, where 

 it had thriven to almost double the bulk, that either of them had 

 and with a less expense of water. 



So in a like manner the mint in L, in whose water a quantity 

 of good garden mould had been dissolved, though it had the dis- 

 advantage to be lees, when it was first set, than ^either of the 



