The Scientific Agriculture of the Period. 285 



Campanella ^ had allowed sense to plants as well as to beasts. 

 Du Val, a Doctor of the Faculty of Paris, who had scouted such 

 wild reasoning, went so far as to assert that the Latin writer 

 had sought to endow plants with capabilities of reason and 

 understanding. The advanced botanical knowledge of the 

 present day would, however, cede a considerable amount of 

 latitude to the ancient theory that plants have their sympathies 

 and antipathies. So that, after all, it is only a question of 

 degree how far Campanella and his disciples, Bradley and 

 Agricola, erred in over-estimating the sentient faculties of 

 vegetables and trees. 



In another work entirely composed by Bradley we find this 

 author groping after scientific truth in a manner singularly in- 

 telligent and effective for one at this early period. He seems 

 to have collected together all the botanical and chemical in- 

 formation that he could lay hands on, and, after careful sifting, 

 to have deduced his own conclusions. Thus, for example, in 

 testing the theory of Melphigius on the circulation of sap, he 

 finds that the roots of plants kept in water will suck up 

 nourishment and grow ; and that trees, when tapped, yield con- 

 siderable moisture ; whence he deduces the conclusion that sap 

 circulates the nourishment derived from the soil throughout 

 the vegetable economy. 



In the various methods for the fertilisation of the soil we 

 shall find him stumbling feebly but surely along the right 

 track. " The whole secret of multiplication," he says, " con- 

 sists in the right use of salts. A Field might be sown every 

 year, if we restored to it by Stercoration what we take from it 

 in the Harvest, and there is no doubt but we might draw from 

 our Ground an immense Profit, provided we assisted Nature by 

 Art." 2 



Bradley had read some of the French agricultural works. He 

 remembered that Palissy had demonstrated that " Salt is the 

 principal substance and Virtue of Dung ; " and that De La 

 Quintaine had written, " There is for certain in the Bowels of 



^ Campanella, lib. 3, De sensis rerum, cap. 14. 



* Curiosities of Agriculture and Gardening^ p. 121. E. Bradley, 1707. 



