Page:The whole familiar colloquies of Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam.djvu/398

394 FAMILIAR COLLOQUIES. . the fire than into the shadow of the tree ; for there are examples innumerable of this kind. Moths included in parchment are trans- formed into butterflies by some secret workmanship of nature, though they seem as if they were dead, and stir not if you touch them, xmless a spider creep near them; then only they appear to be alive. They cannot feel the touch of a man's finger; but they feel the feet of a very small animal crawling. Jo. An insect, before it is alive, can be sensible of his capital enemy. That which is related concerning persons mvirdered is very like this, to whom if other persons approach, there is no alteration; but if he that killed them comes nigh, presently blood flows fresh out of the wound; and they say that by this token the author of a murder has been often discovered.

Ep. What you have heard as to that matter is no fiction. But, not to mention democritical stories, do we not find by experience that there is a mighty disagreement between an oak and an olive tree, that they will both die if they be planted into the ground of each other 1 ? And that an oak is so opposite to a walnut tree that it will die though it be set at a good distance from it; and, indeed, a walnut tree is hurtful to most sorts of plants and trees. Again, though a vine will twine its sprigs round all other things else, yet it shuns a colewort; and, as though it were sensible of it, turns itself another way, as if some person gave the vine notice that his enemy was near at hand. The juice of cole worts is a thing contrary to, wine, and they are used to be eaten against drunkenness. But the colewort has its enemy too ; for if it be set near the herb called sow-bread, or wild marjoram, it will wither presently. There is the like disposition between hemlock and wine; as hemlock is poison to a man, so is wine to hemlock. What secret commerce is there between the lily and the garlic, that growing near to one another they seem as it were mutually to congratulate one another ? The garlic is the stronger, but the lily flower smells the sweeter. Why should I speak of the marriage of trees one "with another, the females being barren unless the male grows near them ? Oil will only mix with chalk, and both of them have an antipathy to water. Pitch attracts oil, though they are both fat things. All things but gold swim in quicksilver, and that only draws it to itself and embraces it. What sense of nature is that which seems to be in a diamond that will resist everything that is hard, but grow soft in a goat's blood 1 Nay, you may see an antipathy even in poisons them- selves. A scorpion, if it chance to creep through henbane, grows pale and benumbed. And the herb cerastis is so noxious to a scorpion, that he that handles the seed of it may take a scorpion into his hand. There are abundance of things of this kind, b.ut the consideration of them more properly belongs to physicians.

What a mighty power of either sympathy or antipathy is there between the steel and the loadstone, that a matter heavy by nature should run to and cleave to a stone, as though it kissed it, and with- out touching it should fly backward 1 And as to water, which readily mingles with all things, but most of all with itself, yet there are some waters which, as though they hated one another, will not mix ; as for instance, the river flowing into the Lake Fucinus runs over it, as Addua does to Larius, as Ticinus to Verbanus, Mincius to Benacus, Ollius to Rhodanus to Lemanus : some of which for many miles only