58 NATURAL HISTORY. 



man be upon an high place without rails or good hold, 

 except he be used to it, he is ready to fall : for imagin 

 ing a fall, it putteth his spirits into the very action of 

 a fall. So many upon the seeing of others bleed, or 

 strangled, or tortured, themselves are ready to faint, 

 as if they bled, or were in strife. 1 



Experiment solitary touching preservation of bodies. 



796. Take a stock-gilly-flower, and tie it gently 

 upon a stick and put them both into a stoop-glass full 

 of quicksilver, so that the flower be covered : then lay 

 a little weight upon the top of the glass that may keep 

 the stick down ; and look upon them after four or five 

 days ; and you shall find the flower fresh, and the stalk 

 harder and less flexible than it was. If you compare 

 it with another flower gathered at the same time, it 

 will be the more manifest. This sheweth that bodies 

 do preserve excellently in quicksilver ; and not preserve 

 only, but by the coldness of the quicksilver indurate ; 

 for the freshness of the flower may be merely conser 

 vation ; (which is the more to be observed, because the 

 quicksilver presseth the flower ;) but the stiffness of 

 the stalk cannot be without induration, from the cold 

 (as it seemeth) of the quicksilver. 



Experiment solitary touching the growth or multiplying 

 of metals. 



797. It is reported by some of the ancients that in 

 Cyprus there is a kind of iron, that being cut into 

 little pieces and put into the ground, if it be well 

 watered, will increase into greater pieces. 2 This is 



1 Arist. Prob. vii. 7. 



2 Arist. Mirab. 43. But it is doubtful whether the pseudo-Aristotle is 



