NUMBER OF PLANTS. 



209 



which are usually and naturally of another colour ; as for 

 example, white bears, white foxes, white hares, white 

 ravens, white blackbirds, and many others, as I myself 

 have seen in Italy. That hares upon the Alps, and in the 

 cold northern regions, do in the winter time change their 

 colour to white, and in the summer again return to their 

 usual and natural colour, though I find it delivered by 

 good authors, and attested by credible persons, I dare 

 not peremptorily assert ; but that the influence of the 

 soil and climate is great, appears farther in our Lanca- 

 shire and Sussex beasts ; of which the former have fair, 

 large, and well-spread horns, the latter small and 

 crooked; and if into Sussex you translate these cattle 

 out of Lancashire, their race by degrees will degenerate, 

 and come to the shape of the natives. So we see the 

 horses in Flanders have large and hairy pasterns, which 

 the English breed have not : and it is reported for a 

 truth, that there is a pasture upon a hill called Hasel- 

 bedge, in the Peak of Derbyshire, near little Hucklow, 

 which will turn the hair of kine that feed thereupon to a 

 grey colour in three years space. Now if diversity of 

 soil, food, climate, or other external circumstances, breed 

 such variety and difference among animals of the same 

 species, much more then may it among plants, which are 

 less free in the choice of their nourishment, and con- 

 stantly affixed to the place where they chance to 

 spring up. 



Two ways there are of getting or producing these 

 differences. First, by sowing the seed of that plant 

 whereof you desire a new kind, in a rich soil, or in a soil 

 different from its natural, or that where it grew before. 

 So if you sow the seed (for example) of a single July 

 flower in good ground, among many that bear single, it 

 shall give you some roots that bear double flowers, and 

 some of different colours from their mother plant, which 

 you may propagate by the slip. The plants that arc 

 most apt to be thus diversified by sowing, are July 



14 



