62 
“ The conflict now becomes terrible, and, from the mutual impulses 
given by each, is stirred up that remarkable effervescence, productive of a 
certain degree of wild heat, by means of which the common mother che¬ 
rishes, with a vital warmth, the seeds committed to her bosom.” 
“ The salt, spectatress of the contest, remains, like a timid mistress, 
passive, and detached from the embraces of her former lord, now chooses 
the conqueror, and this new intercourse forms either an acid or nitre\ and 
the vanquished sulphur, freed from the shackles of the salt and earth, assumes 
a volatile nature.” 
“ This state of things appears to me,” continues Mayow, “ exactly 
suited to vegetation: and we find actually, that, under these circumstances, 
plants take their greatest increase, and nitre is chiefly produced; and this 
occurs especially in the spring deacon. For in the winter the nitro-aerial 
particles, the salts, and sulphur, are bound by ice, as in adamantine chains, 
and are then incapable of any motion, and vegetables cease to grow.” 
“ From this doctrine we see why the excrements of animals, as also 
lixivial salts, and even quick-lime, render the earth fruitful.” 
“ For the salino-sulphureous excrements of animals are particularly use¬ 
ful, as effervescing with the nitro-aerial spirit, thereby giving a due warmth 
to the earth for the cherishing of seeds, when the sulphur becoming liberated, 
and the salt combining with the nitro-aerial spirit, nitre is generated, which 
conduces not a little towards the growth of plants.” 
“ This is proved, likewise, by the analysis of vegetable bodies, which 
contain an inflammable body (sulphur) volatile; a saline body (an alkali) fixed, 
not to be dispersed by the greatest heat of the crucible; water readily dissi¬ 
pated; and a nitre seen by the combustion of plants, many burning with a 
flame although green, especially the beech, which burns with a bright blaze, 
and with a crackling noise, the very characteristic of deflagrating nitre.” 
Evelyn, in his “ Terra, or, Philosophical Discourse on the Karth, and 
the Culture and Improvement of it for Vegetation,” which was read before 
the Royal Society in the year 1 / 675 , the year after Mayow had published 
his five treatises, which have made so great a noise m the present 
Tractatus quinque medico-physici, quorum primus agit de Sal-nitro, et Spiritu Nitro-aereo, 
secundus de Respiratione, tertius de Respiratione foetus in utero, et ovo, quartus de Motu Musculari, et 
spiritibus animalibus, ultimus de Richitide, Studio Joh. Mayow, LL.D. et Medici, necnon Coll. Omn. 
Anim. in Univ. Oxon. Socii. An. Dom. 1674. 
The learned Dr. Beddoes, lecturer on chemistry at Oxford, was the first who held up the merits 
