92 LETTERS ON SCIENTIFIC SUBJECTS. 



visit you by a paper-mercury. If (after I have finished the 

 theoreticall part of physick) you will be pleased to induct me 

 into some practicall knowledge, your commands shall fetch 

 me up any time to Norwich ; where I shall be very glad to 

 weare the livery of, 



Sir, your obliged friend and servant, 



HENRY POWER. 



Our towne can furnish you with very small news, only the 

 death of some of your acquaintance, viz. Mr. Waterhouse and 

 Mr. Sam. Mitchell. This enclosed is from my father-in-law 

 to your selfe : if your occasions will per mitt the return e of 

 a few lines to either of us by this bearer, wee shall be very 

 glad to accept them. 



HENRY POWER TO SIR THOMAS BROWNE. 



[MS. Sloan. Brit. Mus. 3418, fol. 92.] 



Right Worshipfull, The subject of my last letter being so 

 high and noble a piece of chymistry, viz. the reindividualling 

 of an incinerated plant, invites mee once more to request an 



experimentall of it from yourselfe, and I hope you 



will not chide my importunity in this petition, or be angry at 

 my so frequent knockings at youre doore to obtaine a grant of 

 so great and admirable a mystery. 'Tis not only an ocular 

 demonstration of our resurrection, but a notable illustration 

 of that psychopanuchy which antiquity so generally received, 

 how these formes of ours may be lulled and ly asleepe after 

 the separation (closed up in their Ubis by a surer than 

 Hermes his scale,) untill that great and generall day when 

 by the helpe of that gentle heat, which in six dayes hatched 

 the world, by a higher chymistry it shall be resuscitated into 

 its former selfe ; suamque arborem inversam in continue esse, 

 et operari, iterata praeservabit. 



The secret is so noble and admirable, that it has envited 

 my enquirys into divers authors and chymicall tractates, 

 amongst which Quercita and Angelus Salae give some little 

 hint thereof, but so obscurely and imperfectly that I have no 

 more hopes to be ocularly convinced, through their praescrip- 

 tions, then to be experimentally confirmed, that the species of 

 an incinerated animal may be encaskM in a piece of winter 

 chrystall, as some other mineralists confidently affirme. 

 Alsted, I corifesse, in his Pyrotechnia, more cleerely describes 

 the matter, but the mariner of experimenting it hee utterly 



