VOL. VI.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 665 



barks, piths, parenchymas and pulps, and, for substance, pills and skins also, 

 all but one body : the several parts of a vegetable differing from each other 

 only by the various proportions and mixtures, and variously sized pores of these 

 two bodies. 



But to return, besides these three covers, he finds a fourth, vihich is the in- 

 nermost, called by him the secundine, the concave of which membrane is 

 filled with a transparent liquor, out of which the seed is formed. Through 

 this membrane, the ligneous body or seed branches, distributed in the inner 

 coat, at last shoot downright two slender fibres, like two navels, one into 

 each lobe of the bean : these fibres, from the superficies of each lobe, descend 

 a little way directly down ; and then presently each is divided into two branches, 

 one distributed into the lobes, the other into the radicle and plume. 



As for the generation of the seed, dependent on the history delivered, he 

 says, that the sap, having in the root, trunk and leaves, passed divers con- 

 coctions and separations, in the manner by him described, it is at last, in 

 some good maturity, advanced towards the seed. The more copious and 

 cruder part hereof is again separated by a free reception into the fruit, or other 

 part analogous to it. The more essential part is entertained in the seed 

 branches, which being considerably long and very fine, the sap becomes there- 

 in, as in the spermatic vessels, still more mature. From hence it is next de- 

 livered up into the coats of the seed, as into a womb, and the meaner part 

 hereof is again discharged to the outer coat, as proper aliment ; the finer is 

 transmitted to the inner, which being a parenchymous and more spacious body, 

 the sap therefore is not herein a mere aliment, but in order to its being far^ 

 ther prepared by fermentation. The sap being thus prepared in the inner coat, 

 as a liquor now apt to be the matter of the future seed embrj'o, by fresh sup- 

 plies is thence discharged or filtred, or transpired through the secundine above- 

 mentioned ; and the depositure thereof, answerable to the colliquamentum in 

 an egg, or to the semen muliebre, is at last made into the concave of the same. 

 The other part of the purest sap, imbosomed in the ramulets of the seed 

 branch, runs a circle, and so becomes as the semen masculinum, yet more 

 elaborate. With this purest sap the said ramulets being supplied from thence, 

 at last the navel fibres shoot, as the artery into the colliquamentum, through 

 the secundine into the aforesaid liquor, deposited therein. Into which liquor 

 being now shot, and its own proper sap or tinctures mixed therewith, it 

 strikes it thus into a coagulum, or into a body consistent and truly parenchy- 

 mous. And in the interim of the coagulation, a gentle fermentation being 

 also made, the said parenchyma or coagulum becomes such, not of any con- 



TOL. I. 4 P 



