CENTURY IX. 81 



to gold, or iron to copper : and this conversion is 

 better called, for distinction s sake, transmutation. 



Experiment solitary touching alterations which may be 

 called majors. 



839. There are also divers other great alterations of 

 matter and bodies, besides those that tend to concoc 

 tion and maturation ; for whatsoever doth so alter a 

 body, as it returneth not again to that it was, may be 

 called alteratio major ; as when meat is boiled, or 

 roasted, or fried, &c. ; or when bread and meat are 

 baked ; or when cheese is made of curds, or butter 

 of cream, or coals of wood, or bricks of earth ; and a 

 number of others. But to apply notions philosophical 

 to plebeian terms ; or to say, where the notions cannot 

 fitly be reconciled, that there wanteth a term or no 

 menclature for it (as the ancients used) ; they be but 

 shifts of ignorance ; for knowledge will be ever a wan 

 dering and indigested thing, if it be but a commixture 

 of a few notions that are at hand and occur, and not 

 excited from sufficient number of instances, and those 

 well collated. 



The consistencies of bodies are very divers : * 

 dense, rare ; tangible, pneumatical ; volatile, fixed ; 

 determinate, not determinate ; hard, soft ; cleav 

 ing, not cleaving 1 ; congealable, not congealable ; 

 liquefiable, not liquefiable ; fragile, tough ; flexible, 

 inflexible ; tractile, or to be drawn forth in length, 

 intractile ; porous, solid ; equal and smooth, un 

 equal ; venous and fibrous and with grains, entire ; 



1 Compare the list in the De Augmzntis [Vol. II. p. 281.]. 



VOL. V. 6 



