124 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1 696-7. 



animals, while warm, remains liquid and alike ; but as soon as cold, it cakes and 

 has a serum or whey separated from it; the cake is made of glutinous fibres, 

 and therefore if the hot or new drawn blood be well stirred or beaten, it w il 

 not break. Perhaps also stirring the aforesaid milky juice, in drawing it into 

 the shell, will hinder its coagulating or parting with a serum or whey. Also, the 

 caseous part of the milk of animals is glutinous and stringy. Further, this 

 serum came freely from the other, by squeezing between the fingers: and the 

 curds being washed in spring water, became immediately like rags, and tough? 

 and remained still white and dry. As for the purple whey, after a day's inso- 

 lation, it stiffened and became hard, and was easily formed into cakes, which 

 were yet very brittle, and would easily crumble into powder. About December 

 following, having broken one of the cakes, made of the caseous part ot the milk 

 of this plant ; it then proved very brittle, and shone upon breaking, like rosin ; it 

 was then of a dark brown colour ; it burned also with a lasting flame like resin 

 or wax ; and that being melted by heat, it would draw out into long tough 

 strings, like bird-lime. On the contrary, the purplish powder, which was the 

 whey, if put into the flame of a candle, would scarcely burn with a flame at 

 all, but soon be turned into a coal. Lastly, the purple powder tasted very 

 bitter : whereas the caseous part was as insipid as wax. Qu. Whether the artifice 

 of bees does not much consist in a way that nature has taught them, to coagu- 

 late the juice of plants, or ratiier to separate and make choice of the caseous 

 part of the juices of plants, already coagulated, for their wax, and the whey for 

 honey. 



Similar instances of such breaking and separating are also added of the milky 

 juices of some other plants. 



There are other clammy juices, which do not let go a whey when they 

 coagulate, but cake altogether. And for this purpose, we are to examine the 

 natures of the juices of the hieracium kind, thistles and burdock, clematis 

 daphnoides minor, J.B. onions and garlic, ficus, aceris turiones. He made 

 cakes of the sole or unmixed juice of sonchus laevis et asper, without any addi- 

 tion, and it parted not with any whey. Papaver rhoeas Ger. bleeds freely a 

 white juice ; and the heads or seed vessels, when the flower is gone, do yet 

 bleed. He observed, that in gathering it into shells, it presently turned its 

 white colour into a yellow one, inclining to an orange. At first spriiigmg it 

 roped, or was but little clammy, and seemed to be very liquid and dilute ; yet 

 it did not part with any whey, but soon grew stiff, and is very resinous and 

 oily. 



The milks or juices of plants seem to be compounded and mixed of liquors 

 of different, and perhaps contrary qualities ; so that it is probable, if the caseous 



