ON WATEK AND WATERING PLANTS. 203 



ARTICLE VII. 



ON WATER AND WATERING PLANTS, 



EXTRACTED FROM AN OLD AUTHOR BY CLERICU8. 



The subject of water, or watering plants has not been as suffi- 

 ciently examined into as it merits. I am convinced that a great 

 deal of ignorance is displayed in the practice of giving water to 

 plants, both as to its quality and quantity. I have recently met 

 with some useful observations on these matters in a Gardening 

 Book, near two hundred years old, and confident that they 

 would be serviceable to the readers of the Cabinet, I have trans- 

 cribed them for insertion therein. The Author observes, 



"Water is one of the most considerable requisites belonging 

 to a garden : if a garden be without it, it brings a certain mor- 

 tality upon whatsoever is planted. By waterings the great 

 droughts in summer are allayed, which would infallibly burn up 

 most plants, had we not the help of water to qualify those exces- 

 sive heats. Besides as to noble seats, the beauty that water will 

 add, in making Jet d'eaux, canals and cascades, which aro some 

 of the noblest ornaments of a garden." 



'• Sir Isaac Newton defines water (when pure) to be a very fluid 

 salt ; volatile and void of all savour or taste ; and it seems to 

 consist of small, hard, porous, spherical particles, of equal diam- 

 eters, and equal specific gravities ; and also that there are be- 

 tween them, spaces so large, and ranged in such a manner, as 

 to be pervious on all sides." 



" Their smoothness accounts for their sliding easily over the 

 surfaces of one another." 



" Their sphericity keeps them from touching one another in 

 more points than one ; and by both these, their frictions in sli- 

 ding over one another, is rendered the least possible." 



" The hardness of them accounts for the incompressibility of 

 water, when it is free from the intermixture of air." 



" The porosity of water is so very great, that there is at least 

 forty times as much space as matter in it; for water is nineteen 

 times specifically lighter than gold, and of consequence rarer in 

 the same proportion. But gold will (by pressure) let water pass 

 through its pores ; and therefore may be supposed to have (at 

 least) mure pores than solid parts." 



'■ Mona. L'Clerk says, there are these things observable in wa 

 ter, which naturalists study to know and account for." 



" It is transparent; because as some arc of opinion, it consi I 



