OF EARTH. 31 



find it will have obtained such a generous and masculine pregnancy, 

 within that period, as to make good your highest expectations : and to 

 this belongs Sir Hugh Piatt's contrition, or philosophical grinding of 

 earth, which, upon this exposure alone, without manure or soil, after the 

 like revolution of time, will, as he affirms, be able to receive an exotic 

 plant from the farthest Indies, and cause all vegetables to prosper in the 

 most exalted degree; andto speakmagnificently with that industrious man, 

 to bear their fruit as kindly with us as they do in their natural climates ; 

 and this Dr. Munting pretends to have done in Holland. But a little 

 to abate of this, modestly we may say, that this culture (easy and simple 

 as it is) will be found effectually able to render the soil of a most extensive 

 capacity for the entertainment of foreign and uncommon plants. For to 

 enumerate some of its perfections ; such as refuse dung and violent appli- 

 cations, have here pure earth ; and such as require aid, a mellow and 

 rich mould, impregnated with all the blessings which the influence of 

 the heavens and efflorescence of the earth can contribute to it, fitted as it 

 is for generation, (and yet so restrained from it,) as greedily to receive the 

 first seeds, which are committed to it, with a passion and fervency, as it 

 were, of animal love What high and sublime things are spoken more 

 upon this, I forbear to prosecute ; but in Sir Kenelm Digby's Discourse 

 of Sympathetic Powder, he affirms, that the earth, in the years of repose, 

 recovers its vigour by the attraction of the vital spirits which it receives 

 from the air and those superior irradiations, which endow simple earth 

 Avith qualities promoting fermentation. And, indeed, such a vegetative 

 activity 1 have often observed in the bare exposure of some plants but for 

 a few hours only, as has raised my admiration, particularly in the aloe 

 and other kinds of sedums, which, when to all appearance shrunk and 

 shrivelled up, have filled themselves in a moment, set out in the air, 

 when a very few drops of water (at the time, that is, winter time) would 

 certainly have made them rot and turn to a mucilage, as to my cost I have 

 experienced. And these ferments of the earth, by this amity and genial 

 intercourse with the air, are innumerable, to concoct, digest, accelerate, 

 and restore ; equal to, yea, beyond any artificial enforcements of dungs 



P Virgil supposes tlie eai-th to be in this state, when he says. 



Vera tument terrae et genitalia semina poscunt 



