78 



A DISCOURSE 



the rains descend on it, impregnates ground by the dissolution of its sper- 

 matic salts ? I only name the naked phlegm of plants distilled, either to 

 use alone, or extract the former salt ; but I say I only mention them for 

 the curious to examine, and ex ahundanti. For certainly (to return a little, 

 and speak freely my thoughts concerning them) most exalted menstrua, 

 (and as they dignify them with a great name,) essentiated spirits, all hasty 

 motions, and extraordinary fermentations, though, indeed, they may pos- 

 sibly give sudden rise, and seemingly exalt the present vigour of plants, 

 are as pernicious to them as brandy and hot waters are to men ; and 

 therefore wherever these ardent sph-its are applied, they should be poured 

 at convenient distances from any part of the plant, that the virtue may be 

 conveyed through some better qualified medium. But when all is done, 

 waters moderately impregnated and embodied with honest composts, and 

 set in the sun, are more safe, and, I think, more natural ^ ; for, as the 

 learned Dr. Sharrock truly affirms, water is, of its own constitution alone, 

 a soil to vegetables, not only as the most genuine vehicle of the riches 

 which it imparts to plants, through the several strainers, and by means 

 of which all change and melioration is effected, but for that it is, of all 

 other substances, best disposed to insinuate into and fertilize the earth, 

 which is the reason that floated and irriguous grounds are so pregnant. 

 Besides, it is, of all that pretend to it, nearest of blood (as I may say) 

 to the whole vegetable family. For to assert with any confidence what 

 part of the mere earth passes into their composition, or whether it serve 

 (as we touched before) only for stability, or as a womb and receptacle 

 to their seeds and eggs, (for so we are taught to call the seeds of plants,) 

 I shall not undertake to discuss. Every body has heard of Van Helmont's 

 Ash-tree ^ ; and may, without much difficulty, repeat what has been ex- 

 perimented, by exquisitely weighing the mould before and after a gourd 



2 Here our excellent author, after enumerating the wild and fantastical opinions of others, 

 at last gives his own, than which nothing can be more just. 



* Van Helmont planted a willow'-ti'eej which weighed five pounds, in two hundred pounds 

 of earth dried in an oven, and watered it with rain, or distilled water, after carefully cover- 

 ing the case in which it stood, with a perforated tin-cover, to prevent the admission of any 

 other earthy particles. Five years after, he weighed the tree, adding all the leaves it had 

 produced in that time, and found its weight amount to one hundred and sixty-nine pounds 

 two ounces, while the earth was only diminished about two ounces. 



