284 ON WATER AND WATERING PLANTS. 



restrial matter : it is true, the fluid will be thinner every time 

 than other, and more disengaged from the same matter, but never 

 wholly free and clear. He says he has filtered water through se- 

 veral, wholly, free, and clear sheets of thick paper, and after 

 that through very close and fine cloth, twelve times doubled, 

 nay, has done this over and over again, and yet after all there 

 was a considerable quantity of this matter discoverable in the 

 water. 



Now, if it passes thus through interstices that are so very 

 small and fine, along with the water, it is less strange that it 

 should attend in its passage through the ducts and vessels of 

 plants. 



It is true that filtering and distilling of water does intercept 

 and make it quit some of the earthy matter it was before impreg- 

 nated with ; but.then that which after this continues with the wa- 

 ter is fine and light, and consequently such as in a peculiar man- 

 ner is fit for the growth and nourishment of vegetables ; and this 

 is the case of rain-water. 



The quantity of terrestrial matter that it bears up into the at- 

 mosphere is not great ; but that which it does bear up is mainly 

 of that light kind, of vegetable matter, and also that perfectly dis- 

 solved, and reduced to single corpuscels, all fitted to enter the 

 tubules and vessels of plants ; and upon this account it is that 

 rain-water is so fertile and prolifick. 



The reason why, he says in this proposition, that only a 

 great part of the terrestrial matter, that is mixed with the wa- 

 ter, ascends up with it into the plant, is, because all of it 

 cannot. 



The mineral matter is a great deal of it not only gross and 

 ponderous, but scabrous and inflexible, and so not disposed to 

 enter the pores of the roots ; and a great many of the simple 

 vegetable particles do by degrees unite and form some of 

 them small clods or Molecnlae, such as before mentioned in 

 H. K. and L, sticking to the extremities of the roots of those 

 plants. 



Others of them entangle in a more loose manner, and form the 



Nubeculae, and great bodies, that are commonly observed in 



stagnant water. When these are thus conjoined, they are 



too big to enter the pores, which they might have done 



singly. 



(To be continued.) 



