I 



OF EARTH. 79 



is planted in it, and till it be grown to bulk and full maturity, fed with 

 water only ; by knowing how much liquor is insumed, and how little of 

 the earth consumed, some conjecture may be made ; though I do not yet 

 conceive the earth to be altogether so dull and unactive as to afford no 

 other aid to the generation of what she bears ; the diversity of soils being 

 (as we have shewed) so infinitely various, and the difference of invisible 

 infusions so beyond our arithmetic. But if we give liquids pre-dominion, 

 at least the masculine preference, be they salts or spirits (that is, ni- 

 trous spirits) conveyed into her bosom how they will ; sure we are, that 

 water and vegetables are much nearer of alliance, than either water or air 

 are with the earth and mould. But neither do I here also, by any means, 

 exclude the air, nor deny its perpetual commerce and benign influences, 

 diarged as it comes with those pregnant and subtle particles, which in- 

 sinuating into the earth's more steady and less volatile salts, and both to- 

 gether invading the sulphur, (and freeing them from whatsoever they find 

 contumacious,) that intestine fermentation is begun and promoted, which 

 derives life, and growth, and motion, to all that she produces. That by 

 the air, the most effete and elixiviated mould comes to be repaired, and 

 is qualified to attract the prolific nitrous spirits, (which not only dis- 

 poses the earth to this impregnating magnetism, but converts her more 

 unactive fixed salts into quite another genius and nature,) the learned Dr. 

 JSIayow has ingeniously made out ; and all this by a naked exposure to 

 the air alone, without which it produces nothing : nor can plants (totally 

 excluded from the air) live, or so much as erect themselves to any thri- 

 ving purpose, as being deprived of that breath and vital balm, which no 

 less contributes to their growth and nourishment than does the earth it- 

 self, with all our assistances. For that plants do more than obscurely re- 

 spire, and exercise a kind of peristaltic motion, I little doubt from the 

 wonderful and conspicuous attraction and emissions which some of them 

 discover ; particularly the aloes and other sedums, and such as, consist- 

 ing of less cold and vicious parts, send forth their aromatic wafts at 

 considerable distance 



From the experiments of Malpighius, Grew, Hales, and Duhamel, it is abundantly 

 evident that all plants, without distinction, inspire and expire. The leaves perform these 

 salutary operations, so that deciduous trees and shrubs, from the time they lose their leaves 

 to the expansion of their buds, may be considered as in a state of perfect insensibility, rC" 

 sembling that class of animals called sleepers. 



