Page:Mathematical collections and translations, in two tomes - Salusbury (1661).djvu/393

 ture, and which is, in a word, the habitation of all animals, and the womb of all vegetables?

Tis this that I would affirm to be the substance of this our Globe.

But in this you do, in my judgment, affirm that which is not right: for this Earth which is broke up, is sowed, and is fertile, is but one part, and that very small of the surface of the Globe, which doth not go very deep, yea, its depth is very small, in comparison of the distance to the centre: and experience sheweth us, that one shall not dig very low, but one shall finde matters very different from this exteriour scurf, more solid, and not good for the production of vegetables. Besides the interne parts, as being compressed by very huge weights that lie upon them, are, in all probability, slived, and made as hard as any hard rock. One may adde to this, that fecundity would be in vain conferred upon those matters which never were designed to bear fruit, but to rest eternally buried in the profound and dark abysses of the Earth.

But who shall assure us, that the parts more inward and near to the centre are unfruitful? They also may, perhaps, have their productions of things unknown to us?

You may aswell be assured thereof, as any man else, as being very capable to comprehend, that if the integral bodies of the Universe be produced onely for the benefit of Mankind, this above all the rest ought to be destin'd to the sole conveniences of us its inhabitants. But what benefit can we draw from matters so hid and remote from us, as that we shall never be able to make use of them? Therefore the interne substance of this our Globe cannot be a matter frangible, dissipable, and non-coherent, like this superficial part which we call * : but it must, of necessity, be a most dense and solid body, and in a word, a most hard stone. And, if it ought to be so, what reason is there that should make you more scrupulous to believe that it is a Loadstone than a Porphiry, a Jasper, or other hard Marble? Happily if Gilbert had written, that this Globe is all compounded within of *Pietra Serena, or of Chalcedon, the paradox would have seemed to you lesse exorbitant?

That the parts of this Globe more intern are more compressed, and so more slived together and solid, and more and more so, according as they lie lower, I do grant, and so likewise doth Aristotle, but that they degenerate and become other than Earth, of the same sort with this of the superficial parts, I see nothing that obliegeth me to believe.

I undertook not this discourse with an intent to prove demonstratively that the primary and real substance of this our