Vlll PREFACE. 



of Winds, written in Latin by the Author, and by R. G. 

 gentleman, turned into English. It was dedicated to King 

 Charles, then Prince, as the first-fruits of his Lordship s 

 Natural History; and as a grain of mustard-seed, which 

 was, by degrees, to grow into a tree of experimental science. 

 This was the birth of the first of those six months, in which 

 he determined (God assisting him) to write six several his 

 tories of natural things. To wit, of Dense and Rare Bodies ; 

 of Heavy and Light Bodies ; of Sympathy and Antipathy ; 

 of Salt, Sulphur, and Mercury ; of Life and Death ; and 

 (which he first perfected) that of Winds, which he calls the 

 Wings, by which men fly on the sea, and the besoms of 

 the air and earth. And he rightly observeth, concerning 

 those postnati (for, as he saith, they are not a part of the 

 six days works, or primary creatures), that the generation 

 of them has not been well understood, because men have 

 been ignorant of the nature and power of the air, on which 

 the winds attend, as .ZEolus on Juno. 



&quot; The English translation of this book of Winds is 

 printed in the second part of the Resuscitatio, as it is called, 

 though improperly enough ; for it is rather a collection of 

 books already printed, than a resuscitation of any consi 

 derable ones, which before slept in private manuscript.&quot; 



The translations of the Histories of Density and Rarity; 

 of Heavy and Light; of Sympathy and Antipathy; of 

 Sulphur, Mercury, and Salt, are from the third edition of 

 the Resuscitatio, published in 1671; which contains also 

 a translation of the Entrance to the History of Life and 

 Death. 



The translation of the History of Life and Death is taken 

 from the seventh edition of the Sylva Sylvarum, published 

 in 1658. Of this translation, Archbishop Tennison thus 

 speaks in his Baconiana : &quot; The sixth section is the History 

 of Life and Death, written by his Lordship in Latin, and 

 first turned into English by an injudicious translator, and 

 rendered much better a second time, by an abler pen, made 

 abler still by the advice and assistance of Dr. Rawley. 



&quot; This work, though ranked last amongst the six monthly 

 designations, yet was set forth in the second place. His 

 Lordship (as he saith) inverting the order, in respect of the 

 prime use of this argument, in which the least loss of time 

 was by him esteemed very precious. The subject of this 

 book (which Sir Henry Wotton calleth none of the least of 

 his Lordship s works), and the argument of which some had 

 before undertaken, but to much less purpose, is the first of 



