168 F. D. ADAMS EXPERIMENT I^' GEOLOGY 



Some of the ideas presented in this early literature are not only quaint, 

 but rather striking in their ancient dress; but when more closely exam- 

 ined we come to recognize in them certain well known friends. For 

 example, there is the theory, frequently mentioned, of the "vegetability 

 of minerals." Are the minerals in the earth's crust found in the state in 

 which they were originally created or are they continually growing? 

 Such is the question put forward by John Webster in his ''Metallographa, 

 or an History of Metals," which was published in London in the year 

 1670 and in which the thesis of the growth or ^Vegetability'^ of minerals 

 is sustained at length under four heads. 



It is interesting to trace the line of argument, which in his o^ni words 

 is as follows : 



"It appears in Genesis that plants were not created perfect at first, but onlj- 

 in their 'seminaries,' for Moses, chapter 2, gives as a reason why plants were 

 not come forth of the earth, because there had as yet neither any rain fallen 

 nor any dew ascended from the earth whereby they might be produced or 

 nourished. The like we may judge of minerals, that they were not at first 

 created perfect, but disposed of in such sort that they should perpetuate them- 

 selves in their several kinds. And to the same purpose the profound Sendi- 

 voglus saith: 'And what prerogative have vegetables above metals that God 

 should put feed into them and undeservedly exclude these. Are not metals 

 of the same dignity with God as trees are? And, further, whosoever hath 

 diligently considered the manner how most metals do lie in their wombs or 

 beds in the bare rock must necessarily conclude that they could never have 

 penetrated the clefts, chinks, and porous places in such hard bodies unless 

 they were in prbicipiis solutis either in water or vapoui's and steams, and after 

 concocted and matured into several forms of metals, which is an analogous, if 

 not an univocal, generation.' " 



A final reason, though, as the author remarks : 



"Some may account it light, yet I hold it to be very cogent, and so will all 

 persons who understand the philosopher's grand secret, is that Nature's ulti- 

 mate labor is in time to bring all metals to the perfection of gold, which she 

 would accomplish if they were not unripe and untimely taken forth from the 

 bowels of the earth." 



The philosophers merely seek by their art to accelerate the work of 

 Nature in bringing about the passage from the base metal to gold in their 

 laboratories. 



"So it is clear that if metals have not a kind of vegetability in them, then 

 is the art of the transformation of metals false and all the grounds of the 

 more abstruse philosophy without verity." 



Then we have cases cited where minerals have been found growing in 

 nature at the present time — for example, niter in earth which has been 



