VOL. XXl.J PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 3^3 



derive their own nourishment immediately either from vegetable bodies, or 

 from other animals that do so. In particular, the blood, urine, and excrements 

 of animals; shavings of horns and of hoofs; hair, wool, feathers; calcined 

 shells; lees of wine, and of beer; ashes of all sorts of vegetable bodies; leaves 

 straw, roots, and stubble, turned into the earth by ploughing or otherwise, to 

 rot and dissolve there ; all of these are the best manures, and being vegetable sub- 

 stances, when refunded back, again into the earth, serve for the formation of 

 other like bodies. 



In our gardens we meet with still further confirmations of the same thing : 

 the trees, shrubs, and herbs cultivated there, after they have continued in one 

 station, till they have derived thence the greater part of the matter fit for their 

 increase, will decay and degenerate, unless either fresh earth, or some proper 

 manure be applied to them. It is true they may maintain themselves there for 

 some time, by sending forth roots further and further to a great extent all 

 round, to fetch in more remote provision ; but at last all will fail : and they 

 must either have a fresh supply brought to them, or they themselves be re_ 

 moved and transplanted to some place better furnished with matter for their 

 ■subsistence. And accordingly gardeners observe that plants that have stood 

 a great while in one place, have longer roots than usual ; part of which they 

 cut off when they transplant them to a fresh soil, as now not of any further 

 use to them. All these instances, and a great many others that might be 

 alledged, point out a particular terrestrial matter, and not water only, for the 

 subject to which plants owe their increase. For were it water only, there would 

 be no need of manures, nor of transplanting them from place to place, since 

 the rain falls in all places alike, in this field and in that indifferently, in one 

 side of an orchard or garden as well as in another ; nor could there be any 

 reason why a tract of land should yield wheat one year, and not the next ; 

 since the rain showers down alike in each. 



5. Vegetables are nut formed of water, but of a certain peculiar terrestrial 

 matter. It has been shown, that there is a considerable quantity of this matter 

 contained in rain, spring, and river water, that the greatest part of the fluid 

 mass that ascends up into plants, does not settle there, but passes through their 

 pores, and exhales up into the atmosphere ; that a great part of the terrestrial 

 matter, mixed with the water, passes up into the plant along with it: and that 

 the plant is more or less augmented in proportion as the water contains a 

 greater or less quantity of that matter : from all which we may reasonably 

 infer, that earth, and not water, is the matter that constitutes vegetables. 

 Tlie plant in e drew up into it 2301 grains of the fluid mass, and yet had 

 received only .3 grains and a half of increase from all that quantity. The mint 



VOL. IV. 3 E 



