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and passions of the female. The same inequality prevails in 

 those subterraneous beds where metals and fossils are perpetu- 

 ally forming, which renders yet more remarkable the ignorance 

 of some of the reformed alchemists, who imagined they could 

 attain their object by the equable heat of lamps, or the like, 

 burning uniformly. Let this suffice concerning the operation 

 and effects of heat ; nor is it time for us to investigate them 

 thoroughly before the forms and conformations of bodies have 

 been further examined and brought to light. When we have 

 determined upon our models, we may seek, apply, and arrange 

 our instruments. 



IV. The fourth mode of action is by continuance, the very 

 steward and almoner, as it were, of nature. We apply the term 

 continuance to the abandonment of a body to itself for an ob- 

 servable time, guarded and protected in the mean while from all 

 external force. For the internal motion then commences to 

 betray and exert itself when the external and adventitious is 

 removed. The effects of time, however, are far more delicate 

 than those of fire. Wine, for instance, cannot be clarified by 

 fire as it is by continuance. Nor are the ashes produced 1 by 

 combustion so fine as the particles dissolved or wasted by the 

 lapse of ages. The incorporations and mixtures, which are 

 hurried by fire, are very inferior to those obtained by continu- 

 ance; and the various conformations assumed by bodies left 

 to themselves, such as mouldiness, etc., are put a stop to by 

 fire or a strong heat. It is not, in the mean time, unimportant 

 to remark that there is a certain degree of violence in the mo- 

 tion of bodies entirely confined ; for the confinement impedes 

 the proper motion of the body. Continuance in an open vessel, 

 therefore, is useful for separations, and in one hermetically 

 sealed for mixtures, that in a vessel partly closed, but admitting 

 the air, for putrefaction. But instances of the operation and 

 effect of continuance must be collected diligently from every 

 quarter. 



V. The direction of motion (which is the fifth method of 

 action) is of no small use. We adopt this term, when speaking 

 of a body which, meeting with another, either arrests, repels, 

 allows, or directs its original motion. This is the case princi- 

 pally in the figure and position of vessels. An upright cone, 

 for instance, promotes the condensation of vapor in alembics, 

 but when reversed, as in inverted vessels, it assists the refining 

 of sugar. Sometimes a curved form, or one alternately con- 

 tracted and dilated, is required. Strainers may be ranged under 

 this head, where the opposed body opens a way for one portion 

 of another substance and impedes the rest. Nor is this process 

 <>r any other din-etion of motion carried on externally only, but 

 sometimes by one body within another. Thus, pebbles are 



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