CENTURY IX. 449 



fore ; as if silver should be turned to gold, or iron 

 to copper : and this conversion is better called, for 

 distinction 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 con 

 coction and maturation ; for whatsoever doth so alter 

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

 be called &quot; alteratio major ;&quot; as when meat is boiled, 

 or roasted, or fried, etc. 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 philo 

 sophical to plebeian terms ; or to say, where the 

 notions cannot fitly be reconciled, that there wanteth 

 a term or nomenclature for it, as the ancients used, 

 they be but shifts of ignorance; for knowledge will 

 be ever a wandering 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 consistences of bodies are very diverse : 

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

 determinate, not determinate ; hard, soft ; cleaving, 

 not cleaving; congelable, not congelable, lique- 

 fiable, not liquefiable ; fragile, tough ; flexible, in 

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

 intractile ; porous, solid ; equal and smooth, unequal ; 

 venous and fibrous, and with grains, entire ; and 



