THE EAllTH 117 



f.hrough whatever chinky vessel confines it : but water, though 

 it o])erates more slowly, yet always finds a more certain issue. 

 As, for instance, it is well known that air will not pass through 

 leather ; which water will very readily penetrate. Air also may 

 be retained in a bladder ; but water will quickly ooze through. 

 And those who drive this to the greatest degree of precision, 

 pretend to say, that it will pass through pores ten times smaller 

 than air can do. Be this as it may, we are very certain that its 

 parts are so small, that they have been actually driven through 

 the pores of gold. This has been proved by the famous Flo- 

 rentine experiment, in which a quantity of water was shut up in 

 a hollow ball of gold, and then pressed wth a huge force by 

 screws, during which the fluid was seen to ooze out through the 

 pores of the metal, and to stand, like a dew, upon its surface. 



As water is thus penetrating, and its parts thus minute, it 

 may easily be supposed that they enter into the composition of 

 all bodies, vegetable, animal, and fossil. This every chymist's 

 experience convinces him of; and the mixture is the more ob- 

 vious, as it can always be separated, by a gentle heat, from those 

 substances with which it had been united. Fire, as was said, 

 will penetrate where water cannot pass ; but then it is not so 

 easily to be separated. But there is scarce any substance from 

 which its water cannot be divorced. The parings or filings of 

 lead, tin, and antimony, by distillation, yield water plentifully: the 

 hardest stones, sea-salt, nitre, vitriol, and sulphur, are found to 

 consist chiefly of water ; into which they resolve by force of fire. 

 " All birds, beasts, and fishes," says Newton, " insects, trees, 

 and vegetables, with their parts, grow from water ; and. by pu- 

 trefaction, return to water again." In short, almost every sub- 

 stance that we see, owes its texture and firmness to the parts of 

 water that mix with its earth j and, deprived of this fluid, it be- 

 comes a mass of shapeless dust and ashes. 



From hence we see, as was above hinted, that this most fluid 

 body, when mixed with others, gives them consistence and form. 

 Water, by being mixed with earth or ashes, and formed into a 

 vessel, when baked before the fire, becomes a coppel, reniark 

 able for this, that it will bear the utmost force of the hottest fur- 

 nace that art can contrive. So the Chinese earth, of which 

 porcelain is made, is nothing more than an artificial composition 

 of earth and Neater, iniited by heat; and whicli a greater degree 



