jyO - PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO l60y. 



disposed to enter the pores of the roots : and a great many of the simple 

 vegetable particles by degrees unite, and form some of them small clods or mo- 

 leculae, such as those mentioned in h, k, and l, adhering to the extremities of 

 the roots of thote plants : others of them are entangled in a looser manner, 

 and form the nubeculae and green bodies, so commonly observed in stagnant 

 waters, which when thus conjoined, are too large to enter the pores, or ascend 

 up into the vessels or plants, which singly they might have done : those persons 

 who are conversant in agriculture will easily subscribe to this ; they are well 

 aware that be their earth ever so rich, good, and fit for the production of 

 corn, or other vegetables, little will come of it, unless the parts of it be sepa- 

 rated and loose. And it is on this account they bestow such pains in the culture 

 of it, in digging, ploughing, harrowing, and breaking the clodded lumps of earth. 

 It is the same way that sea-salt, nitre, and i)ther salts promote vegetation ; they 

 loosen ilie earth, and separate its concreted parts ; by that means fitting and 

 disposing them to be assumed by the water, and carried up into the seed or 

 plant, for its formation and increase. There is no man but must observe how 

 apt all sorts of salts are to be wrought upon by moisture; how easily they liquate 

 and run with it ; and when these are drawn off, and have deserted the lumps 

 with which they are incorporated, those must moulder immediately, and fall 

 asunder of course. The hard»est stone we meet with, if it happen, as frequently 

 it does, to have any sort of salt intermixed with the sand of which it consists, 

 on being exposed to moist air, in a short time dissolves and crumbles all to 

 pieces: and much more will clodded earth or clay, which is not of near so com- 

 pact and solid a constitution as stone is. The same way likewise is lime service- 

 able in this affair : it contains nothing in itself that is of the same nature with the 

 vegetable mould, or can afford any matter fit for the formation of plants ; but it 

 merely softens and relaxes the earth, by th.it means rendering this more capable 

 of entering the seeds and vegetables set in it than otherwise it would have 

 been ; the properties of lime are well known ; and low apt it is to be put into 

 ferment and commotion by water; nor can such commotion ever happen when 

 lime is mixed with earth, however hard and clodded that may be, without opening 

 and loosening it. 



4. The plant is more or less nourished and augmented, in proportion as the 

 water in which it stands contains a greater or less quantity of proper terrestrial 

 matter in it. The truth of which proposition is eminently discernible through 

 the whole process of these trials. The mint in the glass c was of nuich the 

 same bulk and weight with those in a and b ; but the water in which c was, 

 being river water, which was apparently stored more copiously with terrestrial 

 matter than the spring or rain water, wherein a and b stood ; it had thriven to 



