Page:Discourse Concerning the Natation of Bodies.djvu/39

 with water, as soon as its superiour Superficies, before vailed with water, doth arrive to the Levell of the universall Surface of the said water. To say, in the next place, that water can encrease the weight of things that are demitted into it, is most false, for water hath no Gravity in water, since it descends not: yea, if we would well consider what any immense Mass of water doth put upon a grave Body; that is placed in it, we shall find experimentally, that it, on the contrary, will rather in a great part deminish the weight of it, and that we may be able to lift an huge Stone from the Bottom of the water, which the water being removed, we are not able to stir. Nor let them tell me by way of reply, that although the superposed water augment not the Gravity of things that are in it, yet it increaseth the ponderosity of those that swim, and are part in the water and part in the Air, as is seen, for Example, in a Brass Ketle, which whilst it is empty of water, and replenished only with Air shall swim, but pouring of Water therein, it shall become so grave, that it shall sink to the Bottom, and that by reason of the new weight added thereto. To this I will return answer, as above, that the Gravity of the Water, contained in the Vessel is not that which sinks it to the Bottom, but the proper Gravity of the Brass, superiour to the Specificall Gravity of the Water: for if the Vessel were less grave than water, the Ocean would not suffice to submerge it. And, give me leave to repeat it again, as the fundamentall and principall point in this Case, that the Air contained in this Vessel before the infusion of the Water, was that which kept it a-float, since that there was made of it, and of the Brass, a Composition less grave than an equall quantity of Water: and the place that the Vessel occupyeth in the Water whilst it floats, is not equall to the Brass alone, but to the Brass and to the Air together, which filleth that part of the Vessel that is below the Levell of the water: Moreover, when the Water is infused, the Air is removed, and there is a composition made of Brass and of water, more grave in specie than the simple water, but not by vertue of the water infused, as having greater Specifick Gravity than the other water, but through the proper Gravity of the Brass, and through the alienation of the Air. Now, as he that should say that Brass, that by its nature goes to the Bottom, being formed into the Figure of a Ketle, acquireth from that Figure a vertue of lying in the Water without sinking, would say that which is false; because that Brass fashioned into any whatever Figure, goeth always to the Bottom, provided, that that which is put into the water be simple Brass; and it is not the Figure of the Vessel that makes the Brass to float, but it is because that that is not purely Brass which is put into the water, but an aggregate of Brass and of Air: so is it neither more nor less false, that a thin Plate of Brass