Page:Micrographia - or some physiological descriptions of minute bodies made by magnifying glasses with observations and inquiries thereupon.djvu/148

Rh another according to a certain order or method, which I always observ'd to be this.

12 That side of a collateral or subcollateral, &c. branch, lay over the side of the approximate (as the feathers in the wing of a Bird) whose branchings proceeded parallel to the last biggest stem from which it sprung, and not to the biggest stem of all, unless that were a second stem backwards.

13 This rule that held in the branchings of the Sexangular Figure held also in the branchings of any other great or small stem, though it did not proceed from a center.

14 The exactness and curiosity of the figuration of these branches, was in every particular so transcendent, that I judge it almost impossible for humane art to imitate.

15 Tasting several cleer pieces of this Ice, I could not find any Urinous taste in them, but those few I tasted, seem'd as insipid as water.

16 A figuration somewhat like this, though indeed in some particulars much more curious, I have several times observ'd in regulus martis stellatus, but with this difference, that all the stems and branchings are bended in a most excellent and regular order, whereas in Ice the stems and branchings are streight, but in all other particulars it agrees with this, and seems indeed nothing but one of these stars, or branched Figures frozen on Urine, distorted, or wreathed a little, with a certain proportion: Lead also that has Arsenick and some other things mixt with it, I have found to have its surface, when suffer'd to cool, figured somewhat like the branchings of Urine, but much smaller.

17 But there is a Vegetable which does exceedingly imitate these branches, and that is, Fearn, where the main stem may be observ'd to shoot out branches, and the stems of each of these lateral branches, to send forth collateral, and those subcollateral and those laterosubcollateral, &c. and all those much after the same order with the branchings, divisions, and subdivisions in the branchings of these Figures in frozen Urine; so that if the Figures of both be well consider'd, one would ghess that there were not much greater need of a seminal principle for the production of Fearn, then for the production of the branches of Urine, or the Stella martis, there seeming to be as much form and beauty in the one as in the other.

And indeed, this Plant of Fearn, if all particulars be well consider'd, will seem of as simple, and uncompounded a form as any Vegetable, next to Mould or Mushromes, and would next after the invention of the forms of those, deserve to be enquir'd into; for notwithstanding several have affirm'd it to have seed, and to be propagated thereby; yet, though I have made very diligent enquiry after that particular, I cannot find that there is any part of it that can be imagin'd to be more seminal then another: But this onely here by the by:

For the freezing Figures in Urine, I found it requisite,

First, that the Superficies be not disturbed with any wind, or other commotion of the air, or the like.

Rh