446 NATURAL HISTORY. 



cesses, and affects, and consistences of matter and 

 natural bodies. Therefore they are to be set aside, 

 being but notional and ill limited ; and definite 

 axioms are to be drawn out of measured instances : 

 and so assent to be made to the more general axioms 

 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 in 

 ward 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 

 putrified ; or by excitation and solicitation of the body 

 putrified, and the parts thereof, by the body ambi 

 ent. As for the received opinion, that putrefaction is 

 caused, either by cold, or peregrine and preterna 

 tural heat, it is but nugation : for cold in things 

 inanimate, is the greatest enemy that is to putre 

 faction ; though it extinguisheth vivification, which 

 ever consisteth in spirits attenuate, which the cold 

 doth congeal and coagulate. And as for the pere 

 grine heat, it is thus far true, that if the proportion 

 of the adventive heat be greatly predominant to the 

 natural heat and spirits of the body, it tendeth to 

 dissolution, or notable alteration. But this is 

 wrought by emission, or suppression, or suffocation, 

 of the native spirits ; and also by the disordina- 

 tion and discomposture of the tangible parts, and 



