CHAP. II.] DESIGN OF LITERATE EXPERIMENT. 189 



to show the various ways of making experiments; and as 

 we note it for deficient, and the thing itself is none of the 

 clearest, we will here give some short sketch of the work. 

 The manner of experimenting chiefly consists in the varia 

 tion, production, translation, inversion, compulsion, applica 

 tion, conjunction, or any other manner of diversifying, or 

 making chance experiments. And all this lies without the 

 limits of any axiom of invention ; but the interpretation of 

 nature takes in all the transitions of experiments into 

 axioms, and of axioms into experiments. 



Experiments are varied first in the subject, as when a 

 known experiment, having rested in one certain substance, 

 is tried in another of the like kind ; thus the making of 

 paper is hitherto confined to linen, and not applied to silk, 

 unless among the Chinese, d nor to hair-stuffs and camblets, 

 nor to cotton and skins; though these three seem to be more 

 unfit for the purpose, and so should be tried in mixture 

 rather than separate. Again, engrafting is practised in fruit- 

 trees, but rarely in wild ones; yet an elm grafted upon an 

 elm is said to produce great foliage for shade. Incision like 

 wise in flowers is very rare, though now the experiment 

 begins to be made upon musk-roses, which are successfully 

 inoculated upon common ones. We also place the variations 

 on the side of the thing among the variations in the matter. 

 Thus we see a scion grafted upon the trunk of a tree thrives 

 better than if set in earth ; and why should not onion-seed 

 set in a green onion grow better than when sown in the 

 ground by itself, a root being here substituted for the trunk, 

 so as to make a kind of incision in the root? 



An experiment may be varied in the efficient. Thus, as 

 the sun s rays are so contracted by a burning-glass, and 

 heightened to such a degree as to fire any combustible mat 

 ter, may not the rays of the moon, by the same means, be 

 actuated to some small degree of warmth, so as to show 

 whether all the heavenly bodies are potentially hot 1 ? and as 

 luminous heats are thus increased by glasses, may not opaque 

 heats, as of stones and metals, before ignition, be increased 

 likewise, or is there not some proportion of light here also i 



m The Chinese also manufacture their paper out of the rnterior bark 

 oi cae, /fa. 



