282 NATURAL HISTORY. 







605. Another special affinity is between plants 

 and mould or putrefaction ; for all putrefaction if it 

 dissolve not in arefaction, will in the end issue into 

 plants or living creatures bred of putrefaction. I 

 account moss, and mushrooms, and agaric, and other 

 of those kinds, to be but moulds of the ground, 

 walls, and trees, and the like. As for flesh, and fish, 

 and plants themselves, and a number of other things, 

 after a mouldiness, or rottenness, or corrupting, they 

 will fall to breed worms. These putrefactions, 

 which have affinity with plants, have this difference 

 from them ; that they have no succession or propa 

 gation, though they nourish, and have a period of 

 life, and have likewise some figure. 



606. I left once by chance a citron cut, in a 

 close room, for three summer months that I was 

 absent ; and at my return there were grown forth, 

 out of the pith cut, tufts of hairs an inch long, with 

 little black heads, as if the y would have been some 

 herb. 



Experiments in consort touching the affinities and 

 differences of plants and living creatures, and the 

 confiners and participles of them. 



607. The affinities and differences between plants 

 and living creatures are these that follow. They 

 have both of them spirits continued, and branched, 

 and also inflamed. But first in living creatures, the 

 spirits have a cell or seat, which plants have not ; as 

 was also formerly said. And secondly, the spirits of 

 living creatures hold more of flame than the spirits 



