

CENTURY I. 55 



will not make the body adust or fragile ; but the 

 substance of the water will be shut out. This expe 

 riment we made ; and it sorted thus. It was tried 

 with a piece of free-stone, and with pewter, put into 

 the water at large. The free-stone we found received 

 in some water ; for it was softer and easier to scrape 

 than a piece of the same stone kept dry. But the 

 pewter, into which no water could enter, became 

 more white, and liker to silver, and less flexible by 

 much. There were also put into an earthen bottle, 

 placed as before, a good pellet of clay, a piece of 

 cheese, a piece of chalk, and a piece of free-stone. 

 The clay came forth almost of the hardness of stone ; 

 the cheese likewise very hard, and not well to be cut ; 

 the chalk and the free-stone much harder than they 

 were. The colour of the clay inclined not a whit 

 to the colour of brick, but rather to white, as in 

 ordinary drying by the sun. Note, that all the for 

 mer trials were made by a boiling upon a good hot 

 fire, renewing the water as it consumed, with other 

 hot water ; but the boiling was but for twelve hours 

 only ; and it is like that the experiment would have 

 been more effectual, if the boiling had been for two 

 or three days, as we prescribed before. 



89. As touching assimilation for this is a de 

 gree of assimilation even in inanimate bodies, we 

 see examples of it in some stones in clay-grounds, 

 lying near to the top of the earth, where pebble 

 is ; in which you may manifestly see divers pebbles 

 gathered together, and a crust of cement or 



