78 NATURAL HISTORY. 



The slothful, general, and indefinite contempla 

 tions and notions of the elements and their conju 

 gations ; of the influences of heaven ; of heat, cold, 

 moisture, drought; qualities active, passive; and the 

 like; have swallowed up the true passages, and pro 

 cesses, and affects, and consistencies of matter and 

 natural bodies. Therefore they are to be set aside, 

 being but notional and ill limited ; and definite ax 

 ioms are to be drawn out of measured instances : 

 and so ascent 1 to be made to the more general ax 

 ioms, by scale. And of these kinds of processes 

 of natures and characters of matter, we will now 

 set down some instances. 



Experiment solitary touching the causes of putrefaction. 



836. All putrefactions come chiefly from the inward 

 spirits of the body ; and partly also from the ambient 

 body, be it air, liquor, or whatsoever else. And this 

 last by two means : either by ingress of the substance 

 of the ambient body into the body putrefied ; or by 

 excitation and solicitation of the body putrefied, and 

 the parts thereof, by the body ambient. As for the 

 received opinion, that putrefaction is caused either by 

 cold or peregrine and preternatural heat, it is but 

 nugation. : for cold, in things inanimate, is the greatest 

 enemy that is to putrefaction ; though it extinguished! 

 vivification, which ever consisteth in spirits attenuate, 

 which the cold doth congeal and coagulate. And as 

 for the peregrine heat, it is thus far true; that if the 



1 Assent in the original; a misprint, no doubt; or the mistake of aa 

 amanuensis writing from dictation. J. S. 



