LIFE AND DEATH. 333 



therefore, generally (I speak it of species, not of individuals) 

 creatures that are large in body are longer lived than those 

 that are small, unless there be some other potent cause to 

 hinder it. 



Alimentation or Nourishment ; and the way of Nourishing. 



To the fourth article. The History. 



1. Nourishment ought to be of an inferior nature, and more 

 simple substance than the thing nourished. Plants are nou 

 rished with the earth and water, living creatures with plants, 

 man with living creatures. There are also certain creatures 

 feeding upon flesh, and man himself takes plants into a 

 part of his nourishment; but man and creatures feeding 

 upon flesh are scarcely nourished with plants alone ; per 

 haps fruit or grains, baked or boiled, may, with long use, 

 nourish them ; but leaves, or plants, or herbs, will not do it, 

 as the order of Foliatanes showed by experience. 



2. Over great affinity or consubstantiality of the nou 

 rishment to the thing nourished proveth not well ; creatures 

 feeding upon herbs touch no flesh ; and of creatures feed 

 ing upon flesh, few of them eat their own kind. As for 

 men, which are cannibals, they feed not ordinarily upon 

 man s flesh, but reserve it as a dainty, either to serve their 

 revenge upon their enemies, or to satisfy their appetite at 

 sometimes. So the ground is best sown with seed growing 

 elsewhere, and men do not use to graft or inoculate upon 

 the same stock. 



3. By how much the more the nourishment is better pre 

 pared, and approacheth nearer in likeness to the thing 

 nourished, by so much the more are plants more fruitful, 

 and living creatures in better liking jand plight ; for a young 

 slip or cion is not so well nourished if it be pricked into 

 the ground, as if it be grafted into a stock agreeing with it 

 in nature, and where it finds the nourishment already di 

 gested and prepared ; neither (as is reported) will the seed 

 of an onion, or some such like, sown in the bare earth, bring 

 forth so large a fruit as if it be put into another onion, 

 which is a new kind of grafting into the root or under 

 ground. Again, it hath been found out lately, that a slip 

 of a wild tree, as of an elm, oak, ash, or such like, grafted 

 into a stock of the same kind, will bring forth larger leaves 

 than those that grow without grafting. Also men are not 

 nourished so well with raw flesh as with that which hath 

 passed the fire. 



