Page:Micrographia - or some physiological descriptions of minute bodies made by magnifying glasses with observations and inquiries thereupon.djvu/193

Rh crystallizations, without the consideration and prescience of the nature and reason of a Globular form, and as difficult to explicate this configuration of Mushroms, without the previous consideration of the form of Salts; so will the enquiry into the forms of Vegetables be no less, if not much more difficult, without the fore-knowledge of the forms of Mushroms, these several Enquiries having no less dependance one upon another then any select number of Propositions in Mathematical Elements may be made to have.

Nor do I imagine that the skips from the one to another will be found very great, if beginning from fluidity, or body without any form, we descend gradually, till we arrive at the highest form of a bruite Animal's Soul, making the steps or foundations of our Enquiry, Fluidity, Orbiculation, Fixation, Angulization, or Crystallization Germination or Ebullition, Vegetation, Plantanimation, Animation, Sensation, Imagination.

Now, that we may the better proceed in our Enquiry, It will be requisite to consider:

First, that Mould and Mushroms require no seminal property, but the former may be produc'd at any time from any kind of putrifying Animal, or Vegetable Substance, as Flesh, &c. kept moist and warm, and the latter, if what Mathiolus relates be true, of making them by Art, are as much within our command, of which Matter take the Epitomie which Mr. Parkinson has deliver'd in his Herbal, in his Chapter of Mushroms, because I have not Mathiolus now by me: Unto these Mushroms (saith he) may also be adjoyn'd those which are made of Art (whereof Mathiolus makes mention) that grow naturally among certain stones in Naples, and that the stones being digg'd up, and carried to Rome, and other places, where they set them in their Wine Cellars, covering them with a little Earth, and sprinkling a little warm water thereon, would within four days produce Mushroms fit to be eaten, at what time one will: As also that Mushroms may be made to grow at the foot of a wilde Poplar Tree, within four days after, warm water wherein some leaves have been dissolv'd shall be pour'd into the Root (which must be slit) and the stock above ground.

Next, that as Mushroms may be generated without seed, so does it not appear that they have any such thing as seed in any part of them; for having considered several kinds of them, I could never find any thing in them that I could with any probability ghess to be the seed of it, so that it does not as yet appear (that I know of) that Mushroms may be generated from a seed, but they rather seem to depend merely upon a convenient constitution of the matter out of which they are made, and a concurrence of either natural or artificial heat.

Thirdly, that by several bodies (as Salts and Metals both in Water and in the air, and by several kinds of sublimations in the Air) actuated and guided with a congruous heat, there may be produc'd several kinds of bodies as curiously, if not of a more compos'd Figure; several kinds of rising or Ebulliating Figures seem to manifest; as witness the shooting in the Rectification of spirits of Urine, Hart-horn, Bloud, &c. witness also the curious branches of evaporated dissolutions, some of them against Rh