AND EXPERIMENTAL HISTORY. 221 



v, Of those parts into which we have divided natural 

 history, that of the arts is the most useful, since it exhibits 

 bodies in motion, and leads more directly to practice. Be 

 sides this, it lifts the mask and veil, as it were, from 

 natural objects, which are generally concealed or obscured 

 under a diversity of forms and external appearance. Again, 

 the attacks of art are assuredly the very fetters and miracles 

 of Proteus, which betray the last struggle and efforts of 

 nature. For bodies resist destruction or annihilation, and 

 rather transform themselves into various shapes. The great 

 est diligence, therefore, is to be bestowed upon this history, 

 however mechanical and illiberal it may appear, laying aside 

 all fastidious arrogance. 



Again, amongst the arts those are preferable which con 

 trol, alter, and prepare natural bodies, and the materials of 

 objects, such as agriculture, cookery, chymistry, dyeing, 

 manufactures of glass, enamel, sugar, gunpowder, fire 

 works, paper, and the like. There is less use to be derived 

 from those which chiefly consist in a delicate motion of 

 the hands, or of tools, such as weaving, carpentry, archi 

 tecture, mill and clock work, and the like ; although the 

 latter are by no means to be neglected, both on account of 

 their frequently presenting circumstances tending to the 

 alteration of natural bodies, and also on account of the 

 accurate information they afford of translatitious motion, 

 a point of the greatest importance in many inquiries. 



One thing, however, is to be observed and well remem 

 bered in this whole collection of arts, namely, to admit not 

 only those experiments which conduce to the direct object 

 of the art, but also those which indirectly occur. For in 

 stance, the changing of the lobster or a crab when cooked 

 from a dark to a red colour has nothing to do with cookery, 

 yet this instance is not a bad one in investigating the nature 

 of redness, since the same thing occurs in baked bricks. 

 So, again, the circumstance of meat requiring less time for 

 salting in winter than in summer is not only useful infor 

 mation to the cook for preparing his meat, but is also a 

 good instance to point out the nature and effect of cold. 

 He therefore will be wonderfully mistaken, who shall think 

 that he has satisfied our object when he has collected these 

 experiments of the arts for the sole purpose of improving 

 each art in particular. For although we do not by any 

 means despise even this, yet our firm intention is to cause 

 the streams of every species of mechanical experiment to 

 flow from all quarters into the ocean of philosophy. The 



