Page:Micrographia - or some physiological descriptions of minute bodies made by magnifying glasses with observations and inquiries thereupon.djvu/194

Rh the sides of the containing Jar: others standing up, or growing an end, out of the bottom, of which I have taken notice of a very great variety. But above all the rest, it is a very pretty kind of Germination which is afforded us in the Silver Tree, the manner of making which with Mercury and Silver, is well known to the Chymists, in which there is an Ebullition or Germination, very much like this of Mushroms, if I have been rightly inform'd of it.

Fourthly, I have very often taken notice of, and also observ'd with a Microscope, certain excrescencies or Ebullitions in the snuff of a Candle, which, partly from the sticking of the smoaky particles as they are carryed upwards by the current of the rarify'd Air and flame, and partly also from a kind of Germination or Ebullition of some actuated unctuous parts which creep along and filter through some small string of the Week, are formed into pretty round and uniform heads, very much resembling the form of hooded Mushroms, which, being by any means expos'd to the fresh Air, or that air which encompasses the flame, they are presently lick'd up and devour'd by it, and vanish.

The reason of which Phænomenon seems to me, to be no other then this:

That when a convenient thread of the Week is so bent out by the sides of the snuff that are about half an Inch or more, remov'd above the bottom, or lowest part of the flame, and that this part be wholly included in the flame; the Oyl (for the reason of filtration, which I have elsewhere rendred) being continualy driven up the snuff is driven likewise into this ragged bended-end, and this being remov'd a good distance, as half an Inch or more, above the bottom of the flame, the parts of the air that passes by it, are already, almost satiated with the dissolution of the boiling unctuous steams that issued out below, and therefore are not onely glutted, that is, can dissolve no more then what they are already acting upon, but they carry up with them abundance of unctuous and sooty particles, which meeting with that rag of the Week, that is plentifully fill'd with Oyl, and onely spends it as fast as it evaporates, and not at all by dissolution or burning, by means of these steamy parts of the filterated Oyl issuing out at the sides of this ragg, and being inclos'd with an air that is already satiated and cannot prey upon them nor burn them, the ascending sooty particles are stay'd about it and fix'd, so as that about the end of that ragg or filament of the snuff, whence the greatest part of the steams issue, there is conglobated or fix'd a round and pretty uniform cap, much resembling the head of a Mushrom, which, if it be of any great bigness, you may observe that its underside will be bigger then that which is above the ragg or stem of it; for the Oyl that is brought into it by filtration, being by the bulk of the cap a little shelter'd from the heat of the flame, does by that means issue as much out stalk or downwards, as it does upwards, and by reason of the great access of the adventitious smoak from beneath, it increases most that way. That this may be the true reason of this Phænomenon, I could produce many Arguments and Experiments to make it probable: As,

First, that the Filtration carries the Oyl to the top of the Week, at least Rh Errata