ON WATER AND WATERING PLANTS. 207 



ferent figures, magnitudes, gravities and attractive powers, swim- 

 ming in pure water, or an aqueous fluid ; which seems to be the 

 common basis of all. 



" And the only reason why there are so many sorts of water 

 differing from one another by different properties is, that the 

 corpuscles of salts and minerals, with which that element is im- 

 pregnated, are equally various. 



' Wine is only impregnated with particles of grapes, and beer 

 is water impregnated with particles of Barley, &c. All spirits 

 seem water saturated with saline or sulphureous particles. 



" And all liquors are more or less fluid, according to the 

 greater or smaller cohesion of the particles, which swim in the 

 aqueous fluid ; and there is scarcely any fluid without this cohe- 

 sion of particles, not even pure water itself, as will appear from 

 the bubbles that will sometimes stand on the surface of it, as 

 well as on that of spirits and other liquors. 



' Water adds much to the growth of bodies, in that it both 

 renders and keeps the active principle fluid ; so that they are 

 capable of being conveyed by circulation into the pores. 



The learned Mr. Halley has demonstrated, that if an atom of 

 water be expanded into a shell or bubble, whose diameter shall 

 be ten times as great as before, such an atom would be super- 

 ficially lighter than air, and will rise so long as that flatus, or 

 warm spirit which at first separated it from the mass of water 

 shall continue to distend it to the same degree, but when that 

 warmth declines, and the air grows cooler and withal specifically 

 lighter, these vapours will stop at a certain region of the air or 

 ilse descend. 



' Therefore, if it should be supposed that the whole earth 

 were covered with water, and that the sun should make his di- 

 urnal course round it as now he does, he is of opinion that the air 

 would be impregnated with a certain quantity of aqueous va- 

 pours, which it would retain in it, like salts dissolved in water 

 and that the sun in the day time warming the air, that part of the 

 atmosphere would sustain a greater proportion of vapours (as 

 warm water will hold more salt in it dissolved than cold) which 

 by the absence of the vapours at night would be discharged into 

 dews. 



• And in this ease he concludes there could not he any diver- 

 sity of weather other than periodically every year alike; the 

 mixture of all terrestrious, saline, and heterogeneous vapours 



