it becomes as it were two Bodies and is reflected also in a double Species but were it continued in equality it would be expressed but as one single Species The reason why an inequality in one continuous body causes a refraction is because every protuberance contracts the Species of an object reflected upon it and consequently must represent each of them in a several Species Wherefore a Prism doth represent the same colours of each side of its angle because of the Refraction of the Light arriving through the Inequality of the Angle The ground of the other appearances of a Prism you may easily collect without any further repetition The Sun appears as manifold in the water as the water is rendered unequal through undulation There is no Refraction without a Reflection wherefore Refraction is erroneously divided into simple and mixt supposing simple to be a Refraction without a Reflection which is scarce imaginable The eye of man consisting of continuated equal crystalline parts as Membranes and Humours doth not refract Objects reflected upon it because of the said continuous equality but in case any of the Humours are discontinuated by an interjacent Body Objects appear double because of the Refraction in the eye happening through the inequality of the said interjacent Body A Scheme representing the Derivation of Colours CHAP. XXIII Of Sounds 1. The Definition of a Sound That the Collision of two solid Bodies is not alwaies necessary for to raise a Sound 2. Whether a Sound be inherent in the Air or in the body sounding The manner of Production of a Sound 3. Whether a Sound is propagated through the water intentionally only That a Sound may be made and heard under water 4. That a Sound is a real pluffing up of the Air. How a Sound is propagated through the Air and how far Why a small Sound raised at one end of a Mast or Beam may be easily heard at the other end Why the Noyse of the treading of a Troop of Horse may be heard at a far distance 5. The difference between a Sound and a Light or Colour That it is possible for a man to hear with his eyes and see with his ears likewise for other Creatures to hear and see by means of their feeling 6. The difference of Sounds Why the Sound of a Bell or Drum ceaseth assoon as you touch them with your finger Why an empty Glass causes a greater Sound then if filled with water 7. The Reasons of Concords in Musick 8. The Causes of the variation of Sounds Why celestial bodies Rain and Hail do make but little noyse in the Air. 9. How Sounds are restected How Sounds are intended and remitted 10. The manner of Refraction of Sounds What an undulating Sound is 11. How a Voyce is formed I. SOund is a Quality whereby a natural body moves the Hearing This is a Formal and Relative Definition of a Sound because we call that a Sound which moves the auditory Spirits or internal air of our hearing Besides this it hath a fundamental Essence which is nothing else but a Concussion and Conquassation of the air or otherwise it is the air suddenly and violently concussed or conquassated vibrated or rather pluft up by an extrinsick continuous body be it hard or sof liquid or solid single or double that is between two In the first place I might here question whether a soft or liquid body is apt to make a Sound since Aristotle in his 26. T. de Anim. Chap. 8. states a Sound to be the percussion or collision of two solid hard bodies and particularly that soft bodies as a Sponge or wool do make no sound Notwithstanding this Assertion of Arist. which afterwards I shall make appear to be false I prove that liquid and soft bodies make a sound Poure water to water and hearken whether they make no sound beat one Sponge against another and listen to their sound throw one Pack of woollen cloath upon the other and hearken whether they make no sound II. Next let us enquire whether a sound be a quality inherent in the solid bodies or in the air Not in the solid bodies because they give very little sound in a small compass of air and consequently none without air Wherefore it must rather inhere in the air I prove it a sound is a Passion but it is the air that receives this Passion ergo the sound is in the air The passion is to be krutcht pluft up or shaked 2. A sound sometimes is made when the air is immediately pluft up by one body as when we make a noise by switching the air we hear a sound is made in the air The Definition of a sound asserts it to be a violent and sudden concussion for if you do concuss the air although pent between two hard bodies softly and retortedly it will make no sensible sound because the air gets out from between them by pressing gradually upon its adjacent parts without being pluft up or being kept in by them and so escapes making a noyse But when it is suddenly and violently pressed upon by one or two bodies it is forced to pluffe up because the adjacent air doth not give way fast enough The air being pluft up or concussed is continuated to the ear by reason that one part pluffes up another so the parts of air lying close in continuation one upon the other are soon pluft up continuated to the auditory air within the ears which it moves likewise with the same degree and property of pluffing as the degree of percussion was first made upon it by the property of the percutient How air is pluft up may easily be aprehended viz. by two bodies suddenly violently squeezing out the air which was between them by their sudden collision against one another For instance clap your hands hard together you may by the subtil feeling of your face perceive the air pluft up from between them Or else a pluffing may also be caused by a smart impulsion of the parts of air upon one another by a Stick Board or any other single continuous body The Reason of a sounds celerity and extent of motion to such an improportionable distance you may apprehend from the cause of the swiftness of the lights diffusion treated of in the foregoing Chapt. But withal mark that Light and diffusion of colours are by far swifter then sounds because a Flame being a most subtil and forcible body doth much swifter obtend the air besides the air doth rather accur in an obtension to prevent its disruption then recede whereas in making a sound the air is longer in being obtruded or pluft away from the percutients because it retrocedes and the force percussing doth not compass it circularly from all sides but adversly only Hence it is that at a distance we see a Hatchet driven into Wood long before we hear the sound of it or that we see Lightning before we hear the Thunder III. I remember it is an
the cause of Discords and Concords between Sounds The reason of Concords in Colours is because such a distance or opposition of colour doth set off another according to that Maxime Contraria juxta se invicem posita magis elucescunt Whereas were this distance but of one degree it would rather detract from one another as being defective in setting one another off So a little sour added to much sweet makes an unpleasant tast Likewise in Sounds an Unison and a Second make Discords because there is too little Treble or altitude in a Second to respond to the deep Base of an Unison and hence you may easily conceive the Grounds and Causes of all Concords and Discords The cause of the different sounds of Trebles and Bases is the thickness of the String or percutient vibrating the air in such a degree of obtuseness or such a degree of thinness of the String percussing the air acutely or thus the Bubble which a course String plufs up must needs be thicker then that of a fine one VIII Sounds vary according to the qualification of the percutient in consistency bigness and action A percutient being thick makes a thick Sound so the Base String of an Instrument makes a thick or course Sound A thin percutient beats a thin or sharp sound hence a smal string sounds sharply So that according to the greater or lesser courseness or thickness thinness or sharpness of a percutient the Sound is made more or less course and sharp The rarity of a percutient or its density cause little or no noyse if any a very dumb one because the air is obtruded by neither of them but is only percolated through them A great percutient makes a great noyse a small one little The percussion of a percutient being continuous or interrupted slow or quick smart or feeble raises a continuous or interrupted slow or quick smart or feeble Noyse The Heavens that is the fiery bodies moving with a rapid motion through or with their own Region of fire make some noyse but so little that it would scarce be audible supposing a man were near to them They make some little noyse because they being bodies somewhat continuous and obtruding that little ayr which is admitted to the fire in some measure they must consequently make a noise but such as is soon deaded through the contiguity of the fire Among these Bodies the Moon makes the greatest noyse because its body is more continuous its situation is neerest to the region of the air Supposing two celestial bodies should extraordinarily meet dash against one another they would make an indifferent audible noyse because the peregrine air being thereby more pent its obtrusion must necessarily be the greater A Stella cadens or a falling Star yields no noyse because the air gives way in it self as fast as the other can make way down but did it fall down swifter then the air could give way then of necessity it must obtrude it and raise a sound or did it fall upon air being pent by it and another Body it would do the same with more efficacy Clouds Rain and Hail make a small noyse in the air although not very sensible because the air is loose and free whereby it giveth way but where ever it is pent by them and other Bodies they raise a sound hence Hail and Rain make a noyse when they shrowd the air between themselves and the earth hence it is also why Streams or a Channel of water is not heard unless where it beats smartly against it self or against shallows of Gravel or Pebble Focal fire glowing or any thing within it makes no noyse in it self unless its body being rendered more continuous in a flame is beated against the air or the air is obtruded against it by another continuous Body as by a fan or wind out of Bellows A hissing noyse is made in the air when it is smartly percussed without being pent by any other Body but by its own parts and the percutient Hence it is that a Bullet shot or the switching of the air with a Switch make a hissing noise but their noyse is much altered where the air is pent by it and another solid body A quaking noise as of an Earthquake or the quavering upon an Instrument proceeds from the interruption repetition of the percussion By how much the more the air is pent from all parts the greater and violenter sound it makes Hence it is that the noise of a Gun or of any thing bursting is of that lowdness This also proves a cause why a soft whispering or blast of wind makes a great sound improportionable to so soft a percussion in a Trunk or any other close round long passage Hence a Trumpet or a Hunters Horn do make so great a noyse and is so far propagated IX A sound is either reflexe or refracted A reflexe sound is when it is propelled against a continuous body by which it is repulsed or whence it doth rebound so that the reflection of a Sound is nothing else but a rebounding of it from a continuous body Sounds acquire an increase or a lowder noyse from their rebounding in a like manner as Light is intended by its reflection The greater this reflection is the greater noyse it makes The greatest Reflection is when a Sound is reflected by a circular reflecting continuous body because the sound being circularly propagated for a noyse made in the open air is heard round about is equally reflected from all parts and its parts do as it were reflect back again against one another whereby the sound is majorated to its greatest intention Hence it is that Chappels being circularly rooft reflect a great Sound and were their Bottom also circular the sound would be by far more intended By the way take notice that an Eccho is not a reflection alone of a sound neither is it caused by it alone for all grant that there is a great reflection of a Sound in Chappels and yet there is no Eccho All sorts of Metals formed into a Concave as Pels Bowls made of metal all sorts of drinking Glasses give a great sound for their tinging noise is nothing else but a great intended reflext quaking noise because the percussed sound is reflext circularly within upon the connuated parts of the said Metals Glasses From the same reason it is that all hollow continuated bodies as most sorts of Instruments viz. Virginals Viols Lutes c. make so great and improportionable a sound to so small a percussion A man would imagine that the sound caused by striking of a String of an Instrument should come all from within the Instrument and that there were no sound at all above but it is otherwise 'T is true the greater sound is protruded from within nevertheless there is a sound also without but it being the lesser is overcome and drowned by the protrusion of the greater sound from within This is evident in
rendred of a very unequal temperature where the extraneous Elements uniting together do raise a hollowness in the earth and infinuate into one anothers substance or body to which the coldness of the earth is very much conducing thereby gathering or coagmenting the said Elements together and impelling them into one anothers body and then closing them firmly all which it performs through its coldness Through coldness understand its compressing weighty minima's Wherefore do not still abide in your obstinate conceit that it is the Sun which is the efficient cause of Minerals and Stones For that is absurd I prove it That which is the main efficient of Stones and Metals must be a contracting condensing and indurating substance but the Sun is no contracting condensing or indurating substance Ergo the Sun cannot be the efficient of Stones and Metals The Major is undeniable I confirm the Minor by proving the contrary namely that the Sun doth mollifie because its flame is soft and all heat is soft for softning is nothing else but to dispose a body to bend easily into its self if pressed from without But earth rarefied by fire doth easily bend into it self if pressed from without Ergo The Minor is evident because whatever is throughly hot fiery is soft as we see in red-hot Iron in alive flesh and all Vegetables So that by how much the more heat a body hath by so much the softer it is provided quod caetera sint paria Further What heat is there under the Earth I confess there is more and less coldness under it but no predominating heat What heat can there be in Greenland especially under the earth and yet it is certain that many rocks and stones are generated there They may as well say that fire is the efficient cause of all those Islands of Ice Again so much as a substance consisteth of coldness and earth by so much it participates of hardness or by how much the less heat a body consisteth of so much the lesse hardnesse it partakes of The matter of a stone in the kidneys or in the bladder was sofe when it fluctuated within the vessals but being detained in the kidneys its heat is diminished either through the intense heat of the Kidneys which doth dissipate and attract the lesser heat from the matter retained in the cavity of the kidneys through which ecess of heat the terrestrial and thick waterish parts are coagulated and are closed together through the depressing coldness of the intrinsick earth and water The same matter being retained in kidneys of a cold temperament doth immediately through that degree of coldness coagulate and grow hard The stone in the bladder is generally harder than the stone in the kidneys because the one is of a far colder that is less hot temperament than the other That in the kidneys is more friable whereas the stone in the bladder is affected with a continuous firm thick waterish hardness This I can witness by a stone being taken from a Patient by section which that most learned and expert Physitian Dr. George Bate shewed me six or seven years ago This stone was perduced to that hardness that I am confident an ordinary smart stroak of a hammer could scarce break it Yet when it was within the bladder it was far distant from such a hardness for a piece of the Catheter was unawares run into the body of the stone and broke in it which was afterwards taken out with it but after it had been exposed a little while to the air it grew immediately to that hardness What could be the cause of this but the hotter parts of the stone exhaling into the air whereby the cold parts fell closer and thereby arrived to a greater hardness The errour of Fernelius is obvious in that he stated the intense heat of the kidneys to be the cause of a Lithiasis for it happens as freqently in kidneys of a cold temperament neither is it an insita renum arenosa calculosaque dispositio a parentibus contracta hereditary fixt fabulous and calculous disposition as the same Author conceives which doth consist in a degree of temperament of the solid parts of the kidneys for stones have been generated in kidneys of all kinds of temperaments neither can it be said to be hereditary for many a man hath been troubled with the stone whose Issue never was so much as disposed to it and on the other side many a man hath been miserably tormented with the stone or Duelech as Paracelsus terms it whose Parents never discerned the least symptom of a stone within their bodies Nevertheless as I said before the temperature of the kidneys adds much to the accelerating of a Lithiasis It is then certain that the greatest cause of lapidation or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is internal depending upon the predominance of earth or coldness over the other Elements in a mixture The Focus or Uterus as Van Helmont terms it that is the place where a stone or gravel is generated must be a close hollow place wherefore nothing can arrive to this close hollow place unless it be liquid for a thick or course body will be intercepted before it can reach thither This liquid matter being now lodged within this cavity the hot parts do exhale because now through the hollowness of the place they have got liberty to dislate and free themselves from the heavy terrestrial and thick aqueous parts whereas before when they were kept close together through channels and lodges shutting close upon them the hot parts were firmly contained within and bound up This is necessarily and certainly demonstrative and infers that where ever close hollownesses are groved and that liquid matter containing terrestrial and aqueous parts in it may reach to them there certainly stones and metals can and may be generated By vertue of this position I shall prove and shew by and by that stones and metals may be generated in most hollow parts of the body of man But to persue my discourse The hot parts being now freed from the terrestrial parts and inhering in subtil ayry serosiries do with more ease and force procure their passage through this close and hollow prison than they made their way thither leaving the terrestrial and aqueous parts behind them for a Ransom which by degrees are coagulated more and more according to the expulsion of the fiery and ayry parts Understand also the reasons of the qualification of the Focus or womb of stones and Metals 1. It must be hollow the reason of this is set down already 2. It must be close for were it not close but open the terrestrial and aqueous matter could not be detained there but would have as free a passage as the thin parts Besides closeness conduceth to keep out extrinsick heat which otherwise would again dissolve and mollifie the work wherefore the hardest stones and metals are found some degrees below the Surface of the earth and I dare confidently assert that if metals
1. That the disburdening of the Eastern Rivers into the Ocean is not the cause of its Circulation neither are the Sun or Moon the principal causes of this motion 2. The periodical course of the Ocean The causes of the high and low waters of the Ocean 3. How it is possible that the Ocean should move so swiftly as in 24 hours and somewhat more to flow about the terrestrial Globe 4. A further Explanation of the causes of the intumescence and detumescence of the Ocean The causes of the anticipation of the floud of the Ocean 5. That the Suns intense heat in the torrid Zone is a potent adjuvant cause of the Oceans Circulation and likewise the minima's descending from the Moon and the Polar Regions I. HAving in one of the Chapt. of the precedent Book posed a demonstrative and evident ground of the universal course of the great Ocean and the straitness of that Chapt. not permitting the finishing of the fabrick intended by us upon it Therefore this present plain shall serve for to compleat the delineation thereof but encountring with some rocky stones thereon it is requisite they should be rowled aside before the said Atlantick waves may procure a necessary assent of the true cause of their dayly circular floating The conceit of some Philosophers hath induced them to state the copious irreption of many large and deep Rivers into the Eoan Sea for the principal cause of its circulation the which tumefying its body do thereby press it westward This solution seems void of all reason the evacuation of the presupposed Rivers having no proportion to the replenishing of so extended a body as the Ocean scarce of a Lake or an inland Sea as we have observed of the lake Haneygaban and the Euxian Sea Besides many great Rivers disburdening themselves into the Occiduan Sea might upon the same ground return the course of the Ocean Eastward But imagine it was so why should not the said tumefaction rather incline the sea westward than further eastward Others rejecting the former opinion have in their fansie groven the ground whereon the sea beats deeper and deeper towards the west and so the ground being situated higher in the East shelving down gradually to the west the sea doth through its natural gravity rowl it self to the deeper lower Plane but then the eastern waters being arrived to the west how shall they return to the east again for to continue the said motion Wherefore this opinion may take its place among the Castles in the air Shall we then ascribe the cause of this motion to the rarefaction of the sea through the beams of the Sun which as it is successively rarefied doth swell and press its preceding parts forward As touching the Moon she cannot come into consideration here as being rather noted for condensation than rarefaction First I deny that the Sun doth any whit rarifie the Eastern Ocean because according to their Tenent the rarefaction of the sea happens through the commotion of the subsidencies and terrestrial exhalations contained within the bowels of the sea and scattered through its substance whereby it becomes tumefied which I grant in case the Sun casts its beams obliquely into the depth of the Ocean but I prove the contrary supposing the Sun doth cast its beams directly into the Eastern waters In AEgypt it seldom rains because the Sun casting its beams directly into the waters doth through the same degree of heat through which it might raise vapours dissolve them again likewise in the East Ocean the Sun subtilizing the waters doth doubtless through its heat commove exhalations and subsidencies but the waters being through the same heat attenuated are rendred uncapable of sustaining those terrestrial bodies wherefore they sinking deeper to the ground rather cause a detumescence of the sea I have alwaies observed that waters swell more through the cold than heat and that inundations happen for the most part after a frost besides it is obvious that Rivers are much tumefied when they are frozen and that by reason of the foresaid tumefaction inundations happen more frequently in the winter than at any other time of the year Des-Cartes imagineth the compression of the Moon together with the Earths motion about her own Axis to be the cause of the waters circular motion pressing it from East to West and the variation of this pressure to depend upon the various removal of the Moon from the Center of the Earth effecting the anticipation and various celerity of the waters motion So that where the Earth is obverted to the face of the Moon there the waters must be at their lowest being pressed towards the next quarter of the Surface where they are at their highest whence they are carried about through the Earths proper motion c. 1. I deny his supposition of the Earths motion as being fabulous which we have confuted elsewhere He might as well assert that there be as many Neptunes under water moving it circularly as Aristotle stated intelligencies to drive the Heavens for even this he might excuse by saying it was but an Assumption to prove a Phaenomenon of the water 2. What needs he to affirm a tumour of the water for since he assumes the Earth to move circularly we cannot but grant that the water must also move with it as constituting one Globe together 5. Why doth he in vain reassume in the 55 Sect. that out-worn Doctr. of Aristotle touching the Moons driving of the water which argues him to be very unconstant with himself 4. His stating the air to be so complicable and soft a body renders it very unfit for compressing and driving so vast and weighty a body as the Ocean 5. Can any one rationally or probably conceive that the Sun much less the Moon being so remore and whose forcible effects are so little felt by sublunary bodies should be capable of driving so deep so large and so heavy a body as the Ocean which is as powerful to resist through its extream gravity as all the Celestial bodies are potent to move through their extream lightness What because the Ocean and the Moon move one way therefore the one must either follow or move the other What can a passion so durable and constant and so equal depend upon a violent cause Since then such phansies are ridiculous and not to be proposed by any Philosopher let us now proceed in the unfolding of so difficult and admirable a matter as the course of the Ocean which we have formerly demonstrated to flow about the earth once in 12 hours and somewhat more II. Moreover besides this single motion making a sharper inspection into the drift of the Ocean it will appear to us to absolve a compounded periodical course in a perfixt time namely in 15 daies which space may be called a marinal or nautical month The meaning hereof is imagining a part of the Ocean to flow circularly from a certain point or more plainly a Bowle to rowl circularly
to my apprehension all that Country must necessarily be subjected to such deluges since it swims upon the water Touching Inland Inundations as that which befell Friesland in the year 1218 where near 100000 persons were buried in the water and that of Holland and Zealand in the Reign of Charles the fifth Emperour of Germany in the year 1531. and several times since as that of the last year when a great part of the Country all about Gorcum was seized upon by Inland waters Their causes are to be attributed to torrents streaming down out of the melted snow as also to the swelling of the Inland waters through receiving a great quantity of frosty minima's pouring down from the North in a cold Winter The River of Nile proves yearly extravagant in AEgypt for two months and ten daies because being situated very low it is obliged to receive the superfluity of water falling from above out of severall great Rivers and Lakes as the Lakes Zembre Saslan Nuba and the Rivers Cabella Tagazi Ancona Coror and many others besides the water which it draweth from the hills and other grounds These Rivers and Lakes do constantly swell every year by reason of the great rains that fall there at certain times of the year Besides the heat of the Sun exercising its power very vigorously near the latter end of May doth very much subtilize and rarefie those waters whereby they are rendred more fluid penetrating and copious and lastly the Sun conversing in the northern declination doth impell the Ocean stronger against the Northern shores whereby the waters are also much increased Hence it is that the waters of the Nile are so subtill that they deceive the air in carrying of them up in vapours viz. because they are so subtilly strained No wonder then if they prove so healthy The same causes are appliâ—ble to the excessive increase of the Rivers Ganges Padus Arrius Danow Tiber and Athesis CHAP. X. Of the causes of the before-mentioned properties of Lakes 1. Whence the Lake Asphaltites is so strong for sustaining of weighty bodies and why it breeds no Fish The cause of qualities contrary to these in other Lakes The cause of the effects of the Lake Lerna 2. Whence the vertues of the Lake Eaug of Thrace Gerasa the Lake among the Troglodites Clitorius Laumond Vadimon and Benaco are derived 3. Whence the properties of the Lake Larius Pilats Pool and the Lake of Laubach emanate I. VVHat the cause of those effects of the Lake Asphaltites should be the name seems to contain viz. The water glued together by an incrassated air and condensed fire constituting the body of a certain Bitumen called Asphaltos whence the said Lake doth also derive its name It is uncapable of breeding fish because through its sulphureous thickness it suffocates all vitall flames On the contrary the Lakes Avernum although deep 360 fathom and that of AEthiopia are so much subtilized through the passing of rarefied air that they are uncapable of sustaining the least weight Touching their pernicious quality to fowl it must be attributed to the venomous spirits permixt with that rarefied air infecting the whole Element of air as far as it covers them The Lake Lorna and the other in Portugal cause their effects through the permixture of a quantity of crude nitrous bodies which prove very depressing That Lake of AEthiopia is unctious through the admixture of incrassated air II. The Lake Eaug in Ireland acquires a sideropoetick vertue under water from the imbibition of crude Aluminous juyces by means of their indurating and constrictive vertue changing wood sticking in the mud into an Iron-like substance that part which is under water into a stone-like substance because of the diminution of the said Aluminous Juyces which through their weight are more copious in the mud the part of the wood that sticks out of the water remains wood as being beyond the reach of the said heavy juyces The Lakes of Thrace and Gerasa prove pernicious through admixture of crude arsenical exhalations The Lake among the Troglodites being Mercurial is infestuous to the brain The Lake Clitorius through its nitrosity disturbs the stomach and attracts a great quantity of moisture to it and infecting it with an offensive quality causes a loathing of all Liquors The sudden tempests befalling the Lake Laumond and Vadimon are caused through winds breaking out of the earth through the water Lakes resist induration by frost through igneous expirations pervading them The Lake Benacus shews its fury when its internal winds are excited by external ones causing a Concussion and a Rage in the water like unto an aguish body which is disposed to a shaking fit by every sharp wind raising the sharp winds within III. The River Abda passeth freely through the Lake Larius without any commotion of its body because the waters of the Lake through their extream crassitude are depressed downwards and so are constituted atop in a rigid posture whereas the River is impelled forwards and very little downwards But were it to flow through a shallow water whose quantity doth not bear any proportion to receive the pressure of the air downwards against the earth they would soon communicate in streams 2. The waters of a Lake differ much in crassitude and density from those of a River and therefore do exclude its streams The Lake Haneygaban doth not visibly disburden it self of those waters but thrusting Caverns underneath into the earth raises all those hills through the intumescence of the said waters that are near to her out of which some Rivers do take their rice Pilats Pool is stirred into a vehement fermentation by flinging any pressing body into it because thereby those heterogeneous mineral juyces viz. Vitriolat and Sulphureous substances are raised mixt together and brought to a fermentation and working Through this fermentation the water swells and exceeds its borders but the water being clarified the commotion ceaseth Neither needs any one wonder that so small a matter should be the cause of so great an exestuation since one part of the water doth stir up the other and so successively the whole pool comes to be stirred Pools owe their rice to great rains or torrents which sometime do slow visibly over the meadows or through Rivers causing inundations Sometimes through Caverns of the Earth as that near Laubach CHAP. XI Of the rice of Fountains Rivers and Hills 1. That Fountains are not supplied by rain 2. Aristotles opinion touching the rice of Fountains examined 3. The Authors assertion concerning the rice of Fountains The rice of many principal Fountains of the world 4. Why Holland is not mountainous 5. That the first deluge was not the cause of Hills 6. Whence that great quantity of water contained within the bowels of the Earth is derived 7. Whence it is that most shores are Mountainous Why the Island Ferro is not irrigated with any Rivers Why the earth is depressed under the torrid Zone and elevated towards the polars The
salin ones IV. Sents are materiated out of the subtiller parts of the matter effecting tastes wherefore all waters that are discernable by tastes emit their subtiller parts for sents but of this abundantly before whither I must direct my Reader V. Ice is water congealed or incrassated indurated or rather reduced to its natural state That which congeales the water or reduces it to its natural state is the absence or expulsion of those Elements that render it fluid viz. fire and air These are expelled by frosty minima's falling down from the Poles and compressing or squeezing them both out of the body of water whence it is also that all waters swell through the frost viz. through their repletion with the said minima's These are nothing but Unites or points of earth adunited to so many unites of water freed within their body from all air and fire and detruded from the Polars towards the earth whither they are vigorously forced down in a very close order into the Surface of the waters where arriving they press out the air and fire which being expelled the superficial parts of the water cleave naturally to one another about those frosty minima's The first beginning of a frost is taken from the first decidence of frosty minima's which in their passing cause a vehement compression and lighting upon our tact make us give them the name of cold because they compress our external parts with a smart continuous compression thence falling upon the water if in a smal quantity only do thicken it a little if in a greater do forcibly expel the air and fire which being expelled a concretion of the water near its Surface must naturally follow If now it grows no colder and that these minima's fall in no greater quantity the Ice continues at a stand but if otherwise then it proceeds to a greater induration and a larger concretion And the deeper the waters do thicken the more acute the cold must be or the greater quantity of acute and dense minima's must follow for to further and continuate the said concretion because unless they are acuter than the former they will not be minute enough to pass the small porosities remaining in the Surface of the Ice Ice swimmeth atop the water as long as it freezeth not because it is less weighty for it is heavier but because its continuity and concretion together with the support of the air tending from the ground of the waters towards its own Element do detain it When it thawes the Ice sinks down because it is somewhat discontinued and melted and by reason of the same proportion of air descending and bearing down upon it that was ascended before Notwithstanding the thaw people do oft complain of a great cold two or three daies after and especially in their feet which is nothing else but the same frosty minima's repassing out of the earth and water towards the Element of air for to give way to the melting entring air and fire The frosty minima's that begin to fall with a red Evening sky denoting the clearness of the air and passage do oft bring a furious cold with them because finding no obstruction they fall very densely and acutely upon us but those that fall through a cloudy air seldom cause violent colds because they are partly detained by the same clouds Hence it is that most Countries that are beset with water as Islands peninsuls c. and thence attain to a nebulous air are warmer than other Countries although the former be remoter from the Ecliptick than these because their clouds obstruct and detain a part of the frosty minima's and break the rest in their motion downwards Whence it is also that England is less cold in the Winter than most parts of France or Germany although both are of a less Northern declination than it The same clouds do likewise in the Summer break the violence of the fiery minima's descending whence it is also less hot here than in the forementioned places no wonder then if Geographers do so much extoll this Island for the temperature of its Climate VI. This language is supplied with a very apt distinction of frosts viz. a black frost a gray and a white frost The first of these is felt to be of the greatest fury insomuch that if it proveth for any time lasting it deads the roots of young plants and old trees kills all Vermine and penetrates through the very periostium of Animals and depth of Rivers It derives its violence from the extream number of the descending frosty minima's whose density makes the Skies even look black again A gray frost is between a black and white one consisting likewise of a dense proportion of descending minima's A white frost is the incrassation of vapours in the lowermost region of the air Among these a black frost is of the least continuance because the frosty minima's tumbling down in such vast quantities are soon purged out of the air Here may be inquired why a frost usually begins and ends with the change of the Moon For solving of this you must observe that the causes of the decidence are 1. Their great number 2. Their congregating or congress Touching the first unless their number is proportionable to bore and press through the clouds and resistance of the air they are uncapable of descension for to cause a congelation and although their number be great and dispersed they are nevertheless retained through the over-powering of the clouds Wherefore it is necessary a great quantity should be united into heaps and so make their way through To these principal causes add this adjuvant one viz. The compression of the Moon she at her changes driving the frosty minima's more forcibly towards the Poles through which impulsion they are withal thrusted one upon the other and united into a body whence it is that they at those times do oft take their beginning of decidence Again the Moon near the same terms impelling the clouds and thick air thither doth prove as frequent an occasion of dispersing those frosty minima's especially if much diminished of their body through preceding decidencies Moreover these frosty minima's although they are sometimes broken dispersed in their decidence through the said impulses yet sometimes they do recover a body and make a new irruption downwards And thence it is that oft times a frost holds for a day or two then thaws for as long and afterwards returns to freezing again VII In the next place I am to set down the original and rice of these frosty minima's You may easily apprehend that the Sun in the Torrid Zone and somewhat in the temperate one doth dayly raise a vast number and quantity of vapours consisting of most water then air next fire and earth which through the diurnal motion of the air are carried along from East to West And through daily successions of new vapours they are compelled to detrude their preceding ones towards the Poles whither they seem
of the Siphon and the internal pussing up of the water within the Siphon do testifie II. Another kind of Attraction not unlike to this is observable in boyes their sucking Leathers being wetted and clapt flat upon a stone and afterwards drawn up with a packthread fastned in it attracts the stone with it The cause is alone the continuous cohesion of the water to the stone defending it self from the disruption of the air the which as soon as breaking through occasions the separation of the Leather from the stone III. Two smooth flat equal Marble stones clapt close one upon the other the uppermost attracts the lowermost if equally lifted up from their Center by a ring fastned to it because of the air through its continuity sticking fast to the lowermost and the undermost stones but if disrupted through an unequal lifting the lowermost stone falls In the same manner doth a plain board cast upon the water attract it into a Rising when lifted up by the central part IV. A Wine-Coopers Pipe attracts Wine out of the bung-hole of a Cask The Pipe is somewhat long and narrower towards the bottom and the top but wider in the middle which thrust open at both ends into a Cask full of Wine through the Bung-hole and afterwards applying one 's Thum close to the hole atop may attract a competent quantity of Wine out of the Vessel which with the opening of the upper hole runs out again But methinks that this and the forementioned attractions might rather be termed cohesions or detensions since that which doth attract is the extrinsick attractor viz. ones arm The cause of its attraction is the immission of the Pipe into the Cask to a certain depth where the air being excluded from it and closed with your Thumb you will find a drawing or sucking to your Thumb which is nothing else but the weight of the Wine pressed downwards and notwithstanding cleaving fast to the continuity of your Thumb which being continuous and obtuse doth sustain the liquor continuated to it whereas were it subtil that it could give way as the free air it would not be contained so But suppose you thrusted a Beaker with the mouth downwards under water and stopt a small hole made on the bottom of it with your Thumb the water would not keep in there because the air would enter underneath through which the parts of the water would be disunited and so desert the supposed cohesion of parts why the Wine descends at the opening of the upper hole is through the impulse of the air entring V. The sucking of water through a Reed by the mouth is effected by causing a flat closs cohesion of your Tongue and lips with the continuous parts of water or air for what is contiguous cannot be suckt unless by means of its inherency in continuous bodies because its parts are unapt to cohere To all these kinds of cohesions or adhesions the closeness of sides of those external bodies that cohere together through the internal cohesion of air doth mainly contribute by keeping off the discontinuating air as the closeness of the sucking leather sticking of the two Marble stones of the sides of the Wine-Coopers Pipe of the Lips in sucking c. VI. A Sucker otherwise called a Siphon being a Pipe consisting of two arms of an unequal length meeting in a curvilineal Angle attracts water out of a Vessel untill it be all run out provided it be set running by sucking the water down to the lowermost part of the longer arm being placed without the said Vessel This instance gives us a plain demonstration that attraction is caused by the means of the cohesion of continuous parts to other continuous ones especially if separated through a close Cane from dividing bodies as the air and by the same cause kept close together for water as I said before will alwaies through its weight and continuity cohere and keep close to its next central parts and never separates unless through a disunion by the air or other bodies Hence it is also that water is easily led to any height if impelled by any force through a close Pipe or by a Sucker But why water contained within the shorter arm should yield to water contained within the longer may justly be doubted The reason is because the water contained within the longer Pipe being more in quantity is heavier than the other and therefore prevails and is more disposed for to be pressed downwards But then you might reply That the water of the shorter Pipe is assisted in weight by the other proportion contained within the capacity of the Vessel I answer That the water of the shorter arm is impelled forward through the pressure of the said water contained within the capacity of the Vessel But not through its own gravity pressing downward towards the Center of the world for every proportion of water as I said before retaining the nature of their universal Element only strives for to maintain its own center and therefore water if enjoying a center within its own Circumference wherever it be doth not press or weigh but strives to maintain its nature in rest But that which doth cause a force upon water downwards in the Vessel is the strong sinking down of the air tending downwards for its Center For otherwise water in a Vessel would contain it self in a round figure which it cannot because it is reduced to a flatness by the sinking air VII Attraction by Filtration is performed by causing one end of a piece of Flannell or other wollen cloath to hang into any Liquor over the brim of the containing Vessel and the other end into an empty one whereby the light parts of the water ascend up the cloath and distill into the other Vessel This is effected by separating the thick parts of water and rarefying it through the labels subtil fibres whence the other heavy parts of the water by descending downwards and being pressed by the air do over-press its subtiler and aerial parts upwards the grosser and heavier remaining behind By this it appears that Filtration and other kinds of Attraction already mentioned are not so much Attractions as violent Expulsions As the water of a Sucker will not run out unless the longer arm exceeds the depth of the water in length so neither will water attracted by a filter distill down into the empty vessel unless the distilling Label be lower than the water contained within the other Vessel for the same reason VIII Attraction effected by Amber or other Bituminous bodies otherwise called Electrical attraction depends on emanations or continuous steams emitted from Amber especially if rubbed consisting of incrassated air and fire being impelled circularly untill where they are gathered by a continuous body which if light do return with those emanations upwards for the said emanations being diducted expansive and light are by the weighty comparativè vapourous air of this lower Region striving to keep their nearness to the center squeezed
the first smart impulse The truth of the foresaid reason and manner is apparent in shooting a pole through the water where we may see the water at the farther end raised into a tumor which running about the sides to the other end causeth its propulsion Whence it is also that when there appears no more of the tumor of the water before the pole its motion doth instantly cease XI Disruption or bursting is a sudden separation of the parts of a body through a violent force moving from within This we see happens oft in Canons when over-charged or in bottels filled with water being frozen in the Winter o. Wine in the Summer being close stopt The cause of these latter must be imputed to frosty or fiery minims entring through the pores of the bottels in greater quantity than their capacity can take in and disrupting them for to avoid a penetration of bodies Bodies are oft said to burst through driness as Instruments c. but very improperly since it is the fiery or frosty minims entring their pores and filling their capacities and afterwards disrupting them because of avoiding a penetration of bodies So Instrument-strings are apt to break in moist weather because their continuation is disrupted through penetration of moist bodies into their pores Undulation is a motion whereby a body is moved to and fro like to water shaken in a basin or to the motion of a Bell. The cause is likewise adscribed to the first motion of the Impulsor which being terminated at the end of its return is beat back through the direct descent of the air impelling it by reason it lieth athwart Recurrent motion being but little different from this I shall therefore say no more of it The cause of reflection is the return of the impulse impressed upon the air or water both being media deferentia perpendicularly or obliquely upwards from a hard and plane reflecting body Of refraction the cause is the shuving off of the impulse downwards by the shelving sides of an angular hard body CHAP. XXI Of Fire being an Introduction to a New Astronomy 1. The Fires division into three Regions 2. The qualification of the inferiour Region What the Sun is What his torrid Rayes are and how generated 3. How the other Planets were generated 4. How the fixed Stars were generated 5. A further explanation of the Stars their Ventilation That there are many Stars within the Planetary Region that are invisible Of the appearance of new Stars or Comets Of the Galaxia or Milk-way 6. That the fiery Regions are much attenuated I. THe ground of the fires tending downwards you may easily collect from what I have set down touching the waters and airs commerce with the other Elements It s profundity we may likewise divide into three Regions The first whereof containing the Planetary bodies the next the fixed Stars and the third consisting most of purefire II. The inferiour Region through its nearer approximation to the air and its immersion into it is cast into a subtil flame whose subtility doth effuge our sight and Tact. The Sun is a great body generated out of the peregrin Elements contained in the inferiour igneous Region consisting most of condensed fire and incrassated air extended and blown up into the greatest flame and conglomerated within the greatest fiery cloud These igneous clouds are like to the windy clouds of the air which as they do daily blast down wind upon the earth so do these cast fiery rayes among which that which surrounds the Sun doth vendicate the greatest power to it selfe The manner of casting of its fiery rayes is the same with that of winds viz. The Region of fire forceth up every day or continually a great quantity of air somewhat incrassated and condensed into its own sphere through its descending force striving for a Center This incrassated and condensed air is impelled violently into the body of the Stars by other subtil flames as being more forcible to drive the said adventitious matter from them because their parts are so closely ingaged that they can scarce slow a minim without a penetration Wherefore they must necessarily be impelled gradually into the bodies of the Stars because these are mixt bodies that give way so much in themselves by expelling fiery or torrid minima's down into the air as to be capacious enough of receiving so many airy particles as the Elementary fire doth force up every moment But before I proceed in unfolding the manner of the Celestial mixt bodies their ventilations I must insist somewhat further upon their constitution III. The Celestial mixt bodies are not only like to clouds in their daily and minutely ventilations but also in their constitutions viz. The inferiour ones as the Planets are constituted out of the courser and more mixt matter of the finer cloudy air in the inferiour Region of the Element of fire like the clouds of the inferiour Region of air are constituted out of the courser part of vapours Their coagulation is effected through the force of the fiery Element crushing their matter from below upwards and again is repelled back from the superiour parts of the said fiery Elements because through its being pressed up are scanted of room and therefore do press downwards not only for room but also because of reuniting where they are divided by the said coagulated bodies Now it may easily appear to you 1. Whence that rotundity or rather globosity doth arrive to them viz. because they are circularly crusht 2. Because the air and fire of the said Planets do naturally spread themselves equally from the Center to the Circumference whence a circular figure must needs follow Also 3. That Stars are nothing else but the thicker and denser part of the Heavens coagulated into fiery mixt bodies to wit flames 3. That as they do decrease by Ventilation every day so they do also increase by the introsusception of new aerial particles 4. That they must necessarily be very durable because of the duration of their causes For as the great force of the inferiour parts of the igneous Heavens never desist from striving for the Center and do every day cast up great proportions of aerial matter so do the superiour parts never cease from compressing them into the bodies of the other condensed flames being disposed as I said before through their ventilation to receive them 2. Because the aerial parts being got into the Center of the flames cease from all external Local motion striving only to maintain their Center in rest IV. Fixed Stars are generated out of the subtiler parts of the forementioned aerial evaporations being through their less resisting gravity redounding from water earth in them rendred capable of being screwed up higher to the second Region where they are coagulated through the same motions of the Heavens that Planetary clouds are These are responding to the permanent clouds of the second Region of the air which as they are spread into more large
Surface VIII Why doth the Herb of the Sun vulgarly called Chrysantemum Peruvianum or Crowfoot of Peru because its Leaves and Flowers resemble those of our Crowfoot turn the faces of its Leaves and Flowers about with the Sun Answ. Because the Sun through its igneous Beames doth rarefie that side of the Leaves and Flowers which is obverted to it whereby he doth expel their continuous streames whose egress doth attract or incline them that way whither they are expelled in the same manner as we have explained the Attraction of the Loadstone IX Why is the Laurel seldom or never struck by Lightning Answ. Because it is circumvested with a thick slimy Moysture which doth easily shove or slide off the Glance of a Lightning CHAP. II. Containing Problemes relating to Water 1. Why is red hot Iron rendered harder by being quencht in cold water 2. Whence is it there fals a kind of small Rain every day at noon under the AEquinoctial Region 3. How Glass is made 4. Whence it is that so great a Mole as a Ship yields to be turned by so small a thing as her Rudder 5. What the cause of a Ships swimming upon the water is 6. Whether all hard waterish bodies are freed from fire I. VVHy is red hot Iron rendered harder by being quencht in cold water Answ. Because the water doth suddenly pierce into the Pores of iron being now open and violently expel the fire and air both which as we have shewed in B. 1. Part 2. are the sole Causes of the softness of a body and being expelled leave the same indurated by the weighty Elements pressing more forcibly and harder to their Center II. Whence is it that there fals a kind of small Rain every day from 11 or 12 of the Clock to 2 or 3 in the Afternoon under the AEquinoctial Region Answ. The Sun at his Rising and Descending doth through his oblique Rayes excite a multitude of small vapours which through the privative coldness of the air in the night are concreased into small clouds but reduced into drops of rain through the Suns rarefaction or fiery minims when he is perpendicularly imminent upon them III. How is Glass made Answ. The matter of ordinary Glass is generally known to be Ashes or Chalck burnt out of stones or both The Venice Glasses differing from others in clearness and transparency are made out of chalck burnt out of stones which they fetch from Pavia by the River Ficinum and the ashes of the weed Kall growing in the deserts of Arabia between Alexandria and Rossetta which the Arabians make use of for fuell In the first Book second Part I have told you how a body was reduced into ashes through the expulsion of its thinner glutinous moisture by the vibrating fiery minims The same fire being intended doth through its greater violence enter mollifie diduct and thence melt and equallize the courser thick remaining glutinous moisture by its own presence together with the air which it imports along with it whereby the Terrestial minims that were before clotted are exactly and equally spread throughout the foresaid thick glutinous moisture The fire and air being only admitted from without not incorporated with the said bodies through want of a matrix because they being in that extream overpowring quantity that they may as easily free themselves from the said body as they entered are expelled again as soon as they are exposed to the cold ambient air and so desert the body leaving it glib smooth continuously hard friable rigid and transparent So that it appears hence that Glass is nothing but water reduced nearer to its absolute nature which we have shewed is hard and clear by freeing it from the thin glutinous moisture or air and fire incorporated with a small proportion of water through barning its first subject into ashes and afterwards by uniting diducting and equallizing its own parts contained in the ashes By the forementioned thick or course glutinous moisture I intend a mixture of much water incorporated with a little earth and least air and fire That Glass is water nearer reduced to its absolute nature I shall prove by its properties 1. That glib smoothness of Glass depends upon the continuity of the parts of water necessarily accompanied by a glib smoothness because it doth not consist of any contiguous rough minims 2. It is continuously hard because water of her absolute nature is continuously hard 3. It is friable because the water is throughout divided by the minims of earth which render it so brittle and rigid whereas were it all water it would be harder than any stone It is transparent because it is but little condensed by earth whose condensation renders all bodies obscure 2. Because it is luminous that is apt to receive the lumen from any lucid body as being throughout porous through which it is rendred capable of harbouring the obtended air Glass is distinguisht from Crystallin hardness and transparency because this latter appropriates more of water in her absolute state and less of earth IV. Whence is it that so great a mole as a Ship yields so readily in turning or winding to so small a thing as a Rudder This Problem will make plain that an impulse is intended by a medium or deferens A Ship swimming in the water and being impelled by the wind or a board-hook raiseth the water into a tumour before at her bowes which is violently impelled what by the air lifted up by the tumour what by her own bent to recover that place behind at the stern whence it was first propelled and where you shall alwaies observe a hollowness in the water proportionable to her rising before and therefore as you may see runs swiftly about both the sides and meeting in both the streams abaft doth propel the Ship forward by a reflection and this you may also perceive in taking notice of that most eager meeting of the streams of water from both sides behind at the Rudder which being removed to either side viz. To Star-boord or Lar-boord side directs the Ship towards the sides because the force of the water in returning doth beat hard against that side of the Rudder which is obverted to her as resisting most and collecting her force is shoved towards the opposite side of the Stern whereby her head comes too to the other side whence we may plainly observe that a Ship doth not begin to turn before but alwaies abaft This I prove A Ship hitting her breech against the ground at Sea usually striketh abaft because she draweth more water there than before now the shoving of the Helm to the other side brings her off immediately and brings her head too which is a certain sign that a Ship is moved from abaft and begins first to turn there If it is so it is beyond doubting that the force of the water is forcible behind beyond imagination and thence adding that intention to the impulse V. What is the cause of the swimming of
The division of water p. 289. 3. VVhat a Lake is The strange vertues of some Lakes 290 291 292. 4. VVhat a Fountain is The wonderfull properties of some Fountains p. 293 to 295. 5. Of Physical Wells p. 296. Of Baths p. 297. 7. Of Rivers and their rare properties ib. 298. 8. Of the chief Straits of the Sea p. 299 230. CHAP. VII Of the Circulation of the Ocean 1. That the disburdening of the Eastern Rivers into the Ocean is not the cause of its Circulation neither are the Sunne or Moon the principal causes of this motion p. 301 302. 2. The periodical course of the Ocean The causes of the high and low waters of the Ocean p. 303 304 305. 3. How it is possible that the Ocean should move so swiftly as in 12 hours and somewhat more to slow about the terrestrial Globe p 306 307 308. 4. A further explanation of the causes of the intumescence and detumescence of the Ocean The causes of the anticipation of the floud of the Ocean 309 to 312. 5. That the Suns intense heat in the torrid Zone is a potent adjuvant cause of the Oceans circulation and likewise the minima's descening from the Moon and the Polar Regions p. 313 to 316. CHAP. VIII Of the course of the Sea towards the Polar Coasts 1. What the Libration of the Ocean is That the Tides are not occasioned by Libration The Navil of the World Whence the Seas move towards the North Polar Why the Ebb is stronger in the Narrow Seas than the Floud and why the Floud is stronger than the Ebb in the Ocean Why the Irish Seas are so rough p. 316 317 318. 2. VVhy the Baltick Sea is not subjected to Tides The rise of the East Sea or Sinus Codanus p. 319. 3. The cause of the bore in the River of Seyne p. 320. 4. The causes of the courses of the Mediterranean The rise of this Sea ib. 321. CHAP. IX Of Inundations 1. Of the rise of the great Gulphs of the Ocean The causes of Inundations That the Deluge mentioned in Genesis was not universal The explanation of the Text. p 422 323. 2. The manner of the Deluge That it was not occasioned through the overfilling of the Ocean p. 324. 3. That there hapned very great Deluges since when and where p. 325. 4. The effects of the first deluge ib. 5. Inland Inundations p. 327. CHAP. X. Of the causes of the before-formentioned properties of Lakes 1. Whence the Lake Asphaltites is so strong for sustaining of weighty bodies and why it breeds no Fish The cause of qualities contrary to these in other Lakes The cause of the effects of the Lake Lerna p. 328. 2. Whence the vertues of the Lake Eaug of Thrace Gerasa the Lake among the Troglodites Clitorius Laumond Vadimon and Benaco are derived ib. 3. Whence the properties of the Lake Larius Pilats Pool and the Lake of Laubach emanate p. 329. CHAP. XI Of the rise of Fountains Rivers and Hills 1. That Fountains are not supplied by rain p. 330. 2. Aristotles opinion touching the rise of Fountains examined p. 331. 3. The Authors assertion concerning the rise of Fountains The rise of many principal Fountains of the world ib 332. 4. Why Holland is not mountanous p. 333. 5. That the first deluge was not the cause of Hills ib. 334 6. Whence that great quantity of water contained within the bowels of the Earth is derived p. 335. 7. Whence it is that most shores are mountanous Why the Island Ferro is not irrigated with any Rivers Why the Earth is depressed under the torrid Zone and elevated towards the Polars The cause of the multitude of Hills in some Countries and scarcity in others ib. 336. 8. How it is possible for the Sea to penetrate into the bowels of the Earth p. 337. CHAP XII Of the causes of the effects produced by Fountains 1. Whence some Fountains are deleterious The cause of the effect of the Fountain Lethe of Cea Lincystis Arania The causes of foecundation and of rendring barren of other Fountains The causes of the properties of the Fountains of the Sun of the Eleusinian waters of the Fountains of Illyrium Epirus Cyreniaca Arcadia the Holy Cross Sibaris Lycos of the unctious Fountain of Rome and Jacobs Fountain p. 338 339. 2. The causes of the effects of Ipsum and Barnet Wells p. 340. 3. Whence the vertues of the Spaw waters are derived ib. 4. Of the formal causes of Baths 341. CHAP. XIII Of the various Tastes Smells Congelation and Choice of Water 1. Various tastes of several Lakes Fountain and River waters p. 342. 2. The divers sents of waters p. 343. 3. The causes of the said Tastes That the saltness of the Sea is not generated by the broyling heat of the Sun The Authors opinion ib. 4. The causes of the sents of wates p. 345. 5. What Ice is the cause of it and manner of its generation Why some Countries are less exposed to frosts than others that are nearer to the Line ib. 346. 6. The differences of frosts Why a frost doth usually begin and end with the change of the Moon p. 347. 7. The original or rise of frosty minims Why fresh waters are aptest to be frozen How it is possible for the Sea to be frozen p. 348. 8. What waters are the best and the worst the reasons of their excellency and badaess p 349 350. CHAP. XIV Of the commerce of the Ayr with the other Elements 1. How the Air moves downwards VVhat motions the Elements would exercise supposing they enjoyed their Center VVhy the Air doth not easily toss the terraqueous Globe out of its place How the Air is capable of two contrary motions 351 352. 2. That the Air moves continually from East through the South to West and thence back again to the East through the North. p. 353. 3. An Objection against the airs circular motion answered p. 354. 4. The Poles of the Air. ib. 5. The proportion of Air to Fire its distinction into three profundities p. 355 CHAP. XV. Of the production of Clouds 1. VVhat a Cloud is how generated its difference How a Rainbow is produced Whether there appeared any Rainbows before the Floud 356 2. The generation of Rain p. 357. 3. How Snow and Hail are engendred p. 358. 4. The manner of generation of winds ib. to 362. 5 The difference of winds Of Monzones Provincial winds general winds c. Of the kinds of storms and their causes What a mist and a dew are p. 362 to 370. CHAP. XVI Of Earthquakes together with their effects and some strange instances of them 1. VVhat an Earthquake is The manner of its generation The concomitants thereof p. 370. 2. The kinds and differences of Earthquakes ib. 371 372. 3. The proof of the generation of Earthquakes p. 373. 4. Their Effects upon the air p. 374. CHAP. XVII Of fiery Meteors in the Air. 1. Of the generation of a Fools fire a Licking fire Helens fire Pollux
necessarily be so for water strictly so named had it been heaved up it would have been against its first nature and been moved violently which is improbable since that nullum violentum est perpetuum no violent motion is lasting The nature of air certifieth us that it must be it which moved above the waters under it Lastly The waters above the waters strictly so termed are called the Firmament from its firmness because they are as a deep frame or a strong wall about the waters underneath for to keep them together in a counterpoise from falling to an insinitum but it is ai◠that is above the waters and is a Firmament to them ergo the ayr must be comprehended under the Notion of waters Or thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the Hebrew is by the Rabbi's and Hebrews expounded an Expansion or thing expanded for its Root is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to attenuate if so then by the waters above must be implied ayr whose nature it is to be expanded as I shewed before So whether you take the word according to the interpretation of the Septuagints 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Firmament or of the Rabbi's Expansion there can be nothing else intended by it but ayr I say then as by waters a duplicity of Elements is implied so by the Heavens ayr and fire are implied I prove it Light is fire flaming but the light was drawn from the Chaos if from the Chaos ergo not from the earth for by earth there is only meant earth single but from the Heaven which imports a conjunction of Elements viz. of Ayr and Fire Secondly Is light being a flaming fire drawn from the Heaven ergo there was fire latent in it So let this serve to answer Van Helmont his Objection who denieth fire to be an Element because its name is not set down in the first Chap. of Gen. neither is ayr mentioned among the Elements in so many Letters yet it is comprehended among them 'T is true Fowl are called Fowl of the ayr but what of that this doth not infer that ayr is an Element because Fowl are named Fowl of the Ayr. Secondly Earth and Water are there expressed in so many letters ergo the Chaos was made up of all the four Elements III. The Elements in the Chaos underwent an exact mixture because each being a stem and perfection to the other they required it for had they been unequally mixt then that part which had not been sufficiently counterpoysed by its opposite Element would have fallen from the whole Hence it followeth that they must have been of an equal extent and degree in their first vertue or quality and not only so but also in their quantity that is they consisted all of an equal number of minima's that so each minimum of every Element might be fitted sustained and perfectionated by three single minimum's of each of the other Elements Now was there but one minimum of any of the Elements in excess above the other it would overbalance the whole Chaos and so make a discord which is not to be conceived But here may be objected That the earth in comparison with the heavens beares little more proportion to their circumference then a point I confess that the air and fire exceed the earth and water in many degrees but again as will be apparent below there is never a Star which you see yea and many more then you see but containes a great proportion of earth and water in its body the immense to our thinking Region of the air and fire are furnished with no small proportion of water and earth so that numeratis numerandis the earth and water are not wanting of a minimum less then are contained either in the fire or ayr IV. The efficient of this greatest and universal body is the greatest and universal cause the Almighty God I prove it The action through which this vast mole was produced is infinite for that action which takes its procession ab infinito ad terminum finitum sive a non ente ad ens from an infinite to a finite term or from nothing to somthing is to be counted infinite but an infinite action requireth an infinite agent therefore none but God who is in all respects infinite is to be acknowledged the sole cause and agent of this great and miracuious effect It was a Golden saying upon this matter of Chrysippus the Stoick If there is any thing that doth effect that which man although he is indued with a reason cannot that certainly is greater mightier and wiser then man but he cannot make the Heavens Wherefore that which doth make them excels man in Art Counsel and Prudence And what saith Hermes in his Pimand The Maker made the universal world through his Word and not with his Hands Anaxagoras concluded the divine mind to be the distinguisher of the universe It was the Saying of Orpheus That there was but one born through himself and that all other things were created by him And Sophocles There is but one true God who made Heaven and the large earth Aristotle Lib. 2. De Gen. Cor. c. 10. f. 59. asserts God to be the Creator of this Universe And Lib. 12. Metaph. c. 8. He attests God to be the First Cause of all other Causes This action is in the holy texts called Creation Gen. 1. 1. Mark 10. 6. Psal. 89. 12. Mal. 2. 10. Creation 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is not alwaies intended for one and the same signification sometimes it implying the Creation of the world as in the Scriptures next forementioned other whiles it is restricted to Mankind Mark 16. 15. Mat. 28. 19. Luke 24. 47. In other places it is applied to all created beings Mark 13. 19. Gen. 14. 22. Job 38. 8. Prov. 20. 12. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 To create is imported by divers other Expressions 1. By 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 To Form Gen. 2. 7. Esay 43. 7. 2. By 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 To make Gen. 1. 31. 3. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He hath establisht Psal. 89. 12. Psal. 104. 5. Mat. 13. 35. Heb. 6. 1. 1 Pet. 1. 20. 4. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 To stretch or expand Psal. 10. 2. Es. 42. 5. 5. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 To prepare or dispose Prov. 8. 27. Psal. 74. 16. V. Creation is a production of a being out of and from nothing Tho. gives us this Definition in Sent. 2. Dist. 1. Quest. 1. Art 2. Creation is an emanation of an universal Being out of nothing By an universal being he intends a being as it comprehends all material and immaterial beings So that this is rather a definition of the creation of the material and immaterial world then a definition of the Formality of Creation 2. His Definition is defective and erroneous for he adds only out of nothing This is not enough it being possible for a thing to emanate out of nothing and yet not be created the immaterial operations of Angels and
beings derive their rise and original from one is evident in that all beings arised from the Chaos 2. In their several kinds as in man all men took their Original from one first man Adam God proposes among the perfectest living creatures a pattern of all the rest which is man Now he being multiplied through one although not from one man it is not improbable that all other Species of living creatures multiplied through one 3. We read in the first Chap. That God did first create the moving Creatures that is one of every kind for otherwise Moses would have written that God immediately and primarily had created two of every kind In v. 20. Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creatures and fowles In v. 21. He plainly expresseth that God created every living creature that moveth that is one of every kind as I said before And in the 24th Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind not living creatures after their kind And in the 29 v. Every Herb bearing Seed not Herbs So that this is not to be doubted of You may object that in the 24th v. It is said that God created great Whales ergo more then one I deny the Consequence for Whales here denotes the plurality of Species of great Fishes to wit Porposes Dolphins Whales strictly so named c. not the plurality of Individua in every kind 4. Nature is uniform and not various in acting ergo since she created the first man single and out of him a woman it is apparent that she observed the same order and manner of creating every other perfect moving creature You may object that according to the Antecedence which I offer as a Maxime man should be created in the same manner as Beasts I Answer If you consider him only as a moving Creature having a sensitive soul he was but if as he is man that is Mens sivo Substantia spiritualis rationalis in corpus hominis vivens sensitivum a Natura infusa a Mind or a spiritual rational substance infused by God into a living and moving body then no doubt but the action is various since it is in diversa actionis specie 5. God acteth by the fewest Meanes but one is fewer or less then more ergo If then all beings are multiplied through one then this one must necessarily be the greatest I prove the Consequence You are to apprehend that man as he is an Animal is propagated in the same manner as other Animals Being then propagated through one that one must have been indued with the greatest and strongest vertue of propagation because that wasting and weakning in progress of time could not be sufficient to last out a whole race this greatest vertue must be assixed to a proportionate subject or body which must then be the greatest body for the greatest vertue cannot be contained in a less subject then the greatest body this is evident in a great flame which must be maintained in a great place 2. We may remember out of History that the nearer men lived to the first man the greater and stronger bodies they had the longer they lived the more numerous issue they had and the more generous and the less exercised in wickedness all which proceeded from a stronger vertue and a greater body If so then it is not improbale that the first man and all the first of other kinds of Animals were the greatest for the same reason Besides we read in Joshua 14. 15. That Arba in some Bibles written Adam was the greatest among the Anakims Which most Interpreters judge to be spoken of the first man Adam But possibly you may reply that if Adam was the greatest man he must have been thought to be a Giant but a Giant is monstrous wherefore Adam was not the greatest man I deny the Minor for monstrous is that which doth degenerate from the Species so that it makes a difference between that which is adjudged to be a Monster and the Species as the abundance or defect of parts or a deformation in some or all parts through which its Subject is rendered different from the Species to which it was intended but a great greater or greatest man is no more a Monster then a little less or least man because there is no difference between either in number form or figure of parts 'T is true Giants have been generally received for Monsters but then they were differing from other men in number and figure of parts as the Cyclopes a great sort of people faigned by the Poets to have had but one eye in the midst of their Forehead and to be Vulcans Journeymen employed in making weapons for Jupiter Grandeur of body if actuated by sufficiency of vigorous spirits is a perfection denoting strength of all the animal and vegetative faculties fitted for long life and propagation which therefore must not be detracted from the first of all kinds II. Hence I may then safely infer that in the Firmament the greatest part of the heterogeneous elements and a great proportion of fire were coagulated into the greatest flame which was the Sun Out of the courser part of the Sun God created another great body next to the greatest the greatest which was the Moon For as Earth Waters and Animals were defaecated by having other bodies formed out of their courser matter so it was also in the Element of fire This is most obvious in Animals whose Female was formed out of the courser part of the Male whereby it becometh more excellent and vigorous in all its actions This may be contradicted in that a Lioness is taken to be more vigorous and fierce then a Lion I Answer that this kind of sierceness and apparent vigour is in all Females but it is not lasting more a spurt and shew of vigour and fierceness then real and durable III. These two great flames did by their hourly motion produce other great ones which again propagated as it were lesser and thence little ones which were those by us now called Stars But of these more particularly hereafter IV. In the Ayr the like coagulation formed the thin Clouds consisting of a great part of Ayr incrassated through a smaller quantity of water and punctually divided by the same proportion of fire balanced and incorporated with the least measure of earth These Cloudes have their continual abode in the ayr seldom vanishing Their Colour is blewish arising from its incrassation through water and incorporation with earth for the ayr of it self is so thin that it is insufficient to unite a light or cause reflection but being reduced to a thicker consistence by the co-expansion of water with it it becomes capable of uniting reflecting and propagating a light now were there no Particle of earth affixt to this mixture the colour would be transparent lucid or Chrystalline But being somewhat obtenebrated through the density of earth is changed into a light blew or light Sky-colour V. Thus did the great
light and rare parts to it I wonder what accidental change it is he means it must be either to quantity and then it is the same with augmentation and diminution or to quality and then it is an alteration or a locomotive quality but he mentions none Supposing it to be a quality the question is whether this doth arise in that subject with the adherence to its primitive matter of the extrinsick Agent or whether it doth migrate out of its own subject into another It is not the latter for I have proved in my Dispute of Powers that an Accident doth not migrate out of one Subject into another If the first then it is by the entring of another body between the parts that are separated and what body is that but fire It is that which through its contiguous lightness doth render a dense body rare and so condensation is by expelling the light parts or admitting more parts of a dense body as of earth which doth condensate through its contiguous gravity Wherefore we are not forced to grant a vacuum in Rarefaction because a body is rarefied through the supplying of the supposed voyd spaces by the presence of fire Neither need we to assert a penetration of bodies in Condensation since that those parts which are supposed to be penetrated into the substance of others are expelled It is not then as Tolet writes that rarefaction is become great out of little without the apposition or detraction of a new Substance for were it so then of a necessity there must be allowed a penetration of bodies in condensation and a vacuum in Rarefaction wherefore Scaliger saith well in his 4th Exerc. That there can be no addensation or rarefaction although Rarity and Density are really in them in any single body Ergo dum inter unum minimum naturale ignis puri minima continua circumsita nullum medium corpus intercedat quonam igitur modo queunt esse propius ant longinquius sine intervallo mutuave cor porum penetratione Wherefore since between one natural minimum of pure fire the surrounding continuated minima's which are the minima's of the ayr there is no middle body interposed how then can they be nearer or further without an interval or mutual penetration of bodies The reason as I said before is because without the adjunction of another body to a single one there is no rarefaction or condensation Observe by the way that many of the Parepateticks make a two-fold rarity in bodies The one they confound with a thinness as you may read in Arist. Lab. 2. de part Anim. Cap. 1. And Grammat Lib. 2. de ortu inter Context 8. This they refer to the Category of Quality and doth consecute heat The other which is the more frequent and proper acception of Rarity as they say is which doth not consist in a Tenuity of a substance but in the distance of parts between one another and so they call a sponge rare because it hath parts distant from one another through an interposed space not really void which containes no body but is filled with another thin and insensible body as in a Sponge whose parts are called void wherein notwithstanding ayr is contained This kind of Rarity they refer to the Category of Situs I take them in this last Acception and demand whether it is not the ayr which causes that situation and distance of parts For the Sponge is condensed through expressing the ayr by compression of the Sponge If so then it is not a single quality educed out of the power of matter but the entring of the ayr into its pores which doth rarifie as they term it the Sponge Zabarel Lib. de Calore Coelest Cap. 3. attributes Rarity to the causality of heat and density to Coldness But before he had proposed an Objection which was that heat is produced by rarefaction and attrition To this he strives to answer below but finding he could not go through with it recants and states That in the Elements as they are simple their heat doth produce Rarity and so doth Rarity reciprocally produce heat An absurdity to affirm the effect to be the cause of its cause and the cause to be the effect of it self 2. Heat is not the cause of Rarity because fire is the rarest of all in its own Region and yet as they confess fire is not hot in its own Seat VIII The first quality of water is gravity with continuity the second emanating thence is Crassitude which is a thick consistence exporrected through all its dimensions You will grant me that Crassitude proceeds from an arct and near union of parts or from a close compression of the said parts This compression and union derives from gravity this gravity being continuous doth necessarily cause a crassitude for were it contiguous it would effect a density There is nothing unless it be water or waterish bodies that is thick as Oyles Gums Rozzens fat Tallow are all waterish so far at they are thick yet not without the admistion of most Ayr Ice Chrystal Diamonds and most Precious stones are waterish and therefore thick Choler Pepper the Stars c. are rare because they are fiery that is participate more of fire then of any other Element Flies Cobwebs Clouds c. are thin because they are ayery All earthy bodies are dense as Minerals Stones c. Now as it is necessary that all the Elements should meet in every body so it is necessary that there should concomitate Rarity Density Tenuity and Crassitude in each mixt body Wherefore do not think it strange that thinness and thickness should be in one body although they are counted contraries among Authors I cannot but admire that all Philosopers to this very day should have confounded the signification of these words thick dense thin rare naming thick bodies dense thin ones rare and so reciprocally as if they were one whereas there is a great distinction between them Aristotle Johan Grammat Tolet Zabarel and many others take thinness and rarity to be the same as also thickness and density whereas you may now evidently know that they are altogether distinct and wherein they are so It is erroneous to say that water is dense or fire thick ayr rare c. but water is alone thick ayr thin earth dense and fire rare Bartholin Lib. 1. Phys. Cap. 5. defines Thickness by an adulterine cause Thickness saith he is thought to derive from coldness and density And a little before he described Density to be derived from coldness and thickness Mark his thick dulness in asserting thickness to be the cause of density and density of thickness The cause must be prior causato natura saltem but here neither is prior He makes a difference in their names but in re he concludes them to be one IX The first quality of Ayr is Levity with Continuity its second is Tenuity which is a thin consistence of a substance wherefore Thinness and Thickness are
as it were modi consistentiae Heat is not the cause of tenuity in ayr because heat is accidental to Ayr and tenuity is essential or at least co-essential but that which is accidental and extrinsick cannot be the cause of that which is essential and intrinsick The next effect we can imagine to emanate from lightness with continuity or the greatest diduction and yet remaining continuated must needs be Tenuity Besides these there are some more qualities restant as Obtuseness and Acuteness Asperity and Levor Solidity and Liquidity Softness and Hardness Lentor and Friability It is a mistake in Authors to derive the Original of these Qualities from the Elements as they constitute a mixt body and thence to term them Qualities of a mixt body To the contrary they do emanate from the Elements as they are conceived in their absolute form as hath been proved These Qualities you may nominate third fourth and fifth according as the understanding doth apprehend the one to be before the other in Nature although not in Time The third qualities of the Elements are Obtuseness Acuteness c. I prove it because we apprehend them next to the second qualities for the understanding in discerning these sensible qualities is lead by the Senses as its Pilots now our tact or feeling being the first in esse operari is also imployed in distinguishing those first second and third Qualities and for that reason they are all called tactible or tangible qualities The first action made by any of the Elements upon the tact is local motion as Gravity and Levity for feeling any Element its weight or lightness would be the First thing we should perceive the next would be its rarity or density The third acuteness or hebetude the fourth asperity or levor the fifth hardness or softness the sixth solidity or liquidity the seventh lentor or friability There is a twofold Acuteness formally differing from one another 1. An Acuteness deriving from Density 2. An Acuteness emanating from Rarity Acuteness is a quality whereby our tact is most divided Obtuseness is a quality whereby our tact is least divided Acuteness is in Fire and Earth but in a different manner Acuteness in fire is a rare acuteness whereby it most divideth our tact through its parts being contiguously diducted or spread from the Center The acuteness inherent in earth is a dense acuteness whereby it divides our tact through a dense acuteness or minima's moving through their pressing weight to the Center Obtuseness is a quality following crassitude and tenuity whereby its subject compresseth our tact or divideth it less or least and in longer time Obtuseness in ayr is a quality immediately produced by its tenuity and continuous Expansion for were it contiguous it would be acute but being continuous one part hindreth the other from penetrating or dividing any objected body And so its parts acting together and equally they effect a compression This compression or obtuseness in the ayr is thin and subtil and more potent then that in water because it resisteth less and therefore is also less opposed and through its subtility is capable of making stronger opposition Obtuseness in water issueth out of a thick quality or from its continuous depressing vertue This Obtuseness and that in ayr as also acuteness in fire and earth are altogether different as I said before but through the narrowness of the Language I am compelled to attribute each to two several beings adding some notes of Distinction The same understand of all the other derived Qualities Asperity is a quality immediately consecuting Acuteness and Levor is a quality emanating from Hebetude or Obtuseness Asperity more plainly is an inequality or roughness in the surface of a body this experience tels us proceedeth from a sharpness or Acuteness Levor is an equality of the Surface descending from Hebetude or a continuous pressure or diduction Asperity in fire is a rare diffusing and vibrating asperity that in earth is a dense heavy contracting asperity I prove it our feeling certifieth us that fire is a rare diffusing and vibrating roughness and so feeling earth we feel a dense heavy and contracting roughness From a contiguous and dense Asperity spreades hardness which is a quality where by its subject is difficulty pressed down into it self So thin Levor begetteth softness which is a quality whereby its subject easily giveth way into it self to pressure Hardness in earth may properly be termed Rigidity or a rugged hardness because the earth doth only of all the Elements possess its center and therefore cannot introcede into it self That Rigidity is caused by Asperity its ordinary Definition among Physitians doth testifie Rigidity say they is a hardness with Asperity or a roughness that is from asperity From a continuous and thick Obtuseness derives a smooth hardness such as is conceived in Chrystal or Ice and is alone proper to water Softness in fire being unequal or rough is whereby it giveth way towards its Circumference if pressed from without Softness in ayr being equal and smooth is whereby it giveth way towards its Circumference if pressed from without Solidity is an effect of hardness through which a body is consistent that is uncapable of flowing So water is a smooth solid body because of its peculiar hardness and earth is a rugged solid body likewise because of its proper hardness Liquidity is an effect of Softness whereby a body is apt to flow or to be diducted In Fire it is rare and acute in Ayr thin and obtuse Solidity produceth Friability which is a quality whereby its parts are separable From one another in minute particles wherefore since Solidity cannot give way by flowing it giveth way through Friability Lentor is a quality produced by Liquidity and is whereby a body is rendered deductible by reason of its continuity of Parts We may otherwise apprehend these qualities to differ from one another secundum magis minus thus Asperity is a greater Acuteness of parts Hardness is a greater Asperity or thick Levor Solidity is a greater Hardness Levor is a greater Obtuseness Softness is a greater thin Levor Liquidity is a greater Softness CHAP. XV. Of the Respective Qualities of the Elements particularly of Fire Earth and Water 1. What is meant by the Respective Qualities of the Elements Why they are termed Second Qualities 2. That heat is the second respective or accidental quality of fire That fire is not burning hot within its own Region That fire doth not burn unless it flames is proved by an Experiment through Aq. fort 3. That heat in fire is violently produced The manner of the production of a Flame What it is which we call hot warm or burning How fire dissolves and consumes a body into Ashes 4. That Heat is nothing else but a Multiplication Condensation and Retention of the parts of fire The degrees of Heat in fire and how it cometh to be warm hot scorching hot blistering hot burning hot and consuming hot 5. A way
man The great errour committed in trying of Witches by casting them into the water 3. That a greater Condensation or Rarefaction is impossible in the Earth 4. In what sense the Author understands and intends Rarefaction and Condensation throughout his Philosophy 5. The third Respective quality of Fire What Driness is The Definition of Moysture The third respective qualities of Water and Ayr. Aristotles Description of Moysture rejected That water is the primum humidum In what sense Ayr is termed dry in what moyst 1. THe Second Respective quality of Ayr is a continuous expression towards the Circumference as we see in water viz. in bubbles within whose body ayr being contained doth express the water to the Circumference When water is thus expressed to the Circumference we say then it is water attenuated or rarefied and when ayr is contained within the body of water so as it is not strong enough to come forth we say it is ayr incrassated but these are no real transmutations For can any body imagine that ayr is really and essentially incrassated or condensed as they call it or that water is attenuated or essentially changed into a thin substance by ayr I prove that a real incrassation of the ayr is impossible Peripatecicks generally conceive the incrassation of the ayr to happen when that ayr having thinly or naturally filled up a cavity there is as much more impacted in that cavity upon the preceding ayr as the cavity contained before Through this impaction the former ayr must needs give way into it self for to admit that ayr which is last entred wherefore say they there must be a penetration of bodies whereby that former ayr doth introcede into it self The ayr then thus introceding into it self is called ayr incrassated Water is attenuated when a Pint of water is diducted to a Pint and a quarter or more without being insufflated by the ayr or any other admitted body So rarefaction of earth is when the earth possessing the space of a Pistol Bullet is diducted to the extent of space of a Musket Bullet without the admission of any other Element Fire is supposed to be condensed in the same manner as Ayr is incrassated This is the true and evident state of the Controversie touching Rarefaction and Condensation Attenuation Incrassation which never any among the Peripateticks did yet truly state They supposing and taking it for granted that such a Condensation Rarefaction Artenuation and Incrassation is possible and hapneth every moment do proceed in debating whether a penetration of bodies be not necessary in Rarefaction and Condensation As for insufflation that is not to be called in question because we stated Incrassation and Rarefaction to happen without the admittance of any other body Wherefore proving such an Incrassation and Attenuation to be impossible and absurd their further surmising of penetration will seem ridiculous Supposing that a Glass were filled with pure water all the Arts of the world could not distend it without the admission of another body through the force of which its parts might be divided and lifted up Since then that water is said to be attenuated because its parts are lifted up diducted through Ayr and Fire retained with their body this cannot be a natural and proper attenuation of the real parts of water but only a violent diduction of water through the ayr which is under it Here may be objected That water when it is thus lifted up and expanded is stretcht and through that stretching its parts are attenuated and its quantity is increased because after the retching it possesseth a larger place To this I Answer that the encrease of quantity about the Surface is not through a single extent of water without access of other parts of water to it but the encrease is from the access of those parts which did possess the Center and now are beaten away and impelled to the Surface where arriving they must be extended in greater quantity and possess a larger place So that what is encreased in the Surface is decreased from the Center and its adjacent parts A Chord of an Instrument is producted in length because it is diminished in thickness and not from a meer quality without the Access of other parts 2. Were the natural thickness of water transmutable into thinness then one extream contrary would be transmutable into the other for thinness and thickness are as much contrary as coldness and heat or dryness and moysture and who ever knew the same coldness changed into heat or the same heat into coldness That would be as if one said one and the same was both cold and hot at the same time I guess your Reply to wit that through Thinness is not meant an extream Thinness but a less Thickness only I answer That if a thick Element is transmutable into a less thick then certainly through the continuance and intention of the cause of that less thickning it might become least thick that is most thin wherefore your Reply is invalid 3. Were thickness transmutable into thinness then every rarefaction would be a creation secundi modi or a new generation because such a transmutation is a non esse vel a nihilo sui ad esse aliquid for thickness is a positive if I may be suffered to term it so privation and negation of thinness because when we affirm a thing to be thick it is the same as if we said it is not thin 4. Thickness is a property quarti modi of water but a proprium quarti modi is inseparable from its Subject and that to remain in being II. The same Arguments prove the impossibility of incrassating Ayr and such a supposition is so far absurd that it is impossible and contradictory to Nature that one Minimum more of Ayr should enter into a Cavity already filled up with it and the ayr would sooner break the world then admit incrassation although but in one Minimum If the nature of ayr is to be thin then in taking away tenuity you take away the nature of Ayr. And if ayr could be incrassated in one minimum it might be incrassated to the thickness of water Lastly was there any such incrassation there must of necessity a penetration of bodies be allowed but a penetration is impossible ergo Incrassation also I prove that a penetration is impossible Suppose a hundred minima's of ayr were through penetration incrassated to fifty and these fifty to possess but half the place which the hundred did fill up I conclude then that through continuance and intention of the same incrassating cause they could be reduced to one minimum and from one minimum to the essence of a spirit or to nothing for since they through penetration have lost the space of Ninety nine unities of points through the same reason they might the easier lose the last unity and so become spirits and thence nothing if there was a penetration of bodies then the less body into which the
spirits How the Air happens to burst through a sudden great light That a sudden great Light may blind kill or cast a man into an Apoplexy 8. How Light renders all Objects visible Why a piece of Money cast into a Basin filled with water appears bigger than it is The causes of apparent Colours Why a great Object appears but small to one afar off The difference between lux and lumen What a Beam is What a Splendour is That the Lights begot by the Stars and other flames are not distinguished specie How the Coelum Empyreum is said to be Lucid. I. VVE are now to ennumerate and unfold the remaining qualities risen from the mixture of the Elements such are Light Colours Sounds Odors and Sapors We will first begin with Light as being the excellentest among them Light is a quality emanating from flaming fire A flame is nothing else but incrassated Air expanded and deducted in rotundity by condensed fire which is detained and imprisoned within the foresaid qualified Air. The difficulties requiring illustration are 1. How the fire comes to be condensed 2. How imprisoned 3. Why the Air doth immediately surround it 4. How light is propagated and the manner of its action As to the first Fire I have told you will not burn unless it be condensed for being naturally rare it penetrates through the incrassated Air with ease but being condensed it doth not because it is adjoyned to a heavy gross body namely the minima's of the Earth and Water which doth put a stop to its pass but nevertheless the force of fire is stronger by reason of those adjoyned heavy minima's For fire being violently detained by them is grown stronger 2. Fire being to divide another thick body makes use of the compressing accuteness of Earth to divide it which it effects by protruding those dense parts before it for through its single rarity it could not 2. Fire flying out and being expulsed out of a mixt body if it doth not meet with incrassated Air to retain it will pass and vanish but hitting against incrassated Air it strives to pass the Air again being continuous doth maintain her continuity with all her force and thirdly the fire moving circularly makes a circular dent into the mass of the said thickned Ayr which it beats against the advenient Ayr also striving from all parts to recover its situation and therefore necessarily surrounding the fire The Ayr again is also become stronger because of its violent detention notwithstanding the fire being the more potent doth diduct it into an oval or round Figure in the same manner as Wind striving to pass the water doth blow it up into a bubble Fire being thus condensed imprisoned and surrounded with thick ayr and diducting the same ayr into an oval or round Figure is called a flame II. The properties of a flame are 1. to be burning hot 2. to be an lux illuminans illuminating light The burning proceeds from the particles of condensed fire violently striking through the moisture of a mixt body whereby it divides it into ashes or a black crust tending to ashes Before I shew the manner of emanation of Light let us first examine what it is we call Light Light is that which is visible and renders all things about it visible Wherefore you do mark that Light is nothing but that which affects and moves the eye-sight If then I make it appear to you whereby it is that fire doth affect the Eye-sight therein I shew you the manner of emanation or operation of Light You must apprehend the optick spirits to be a thin continuous body equally interwoven through all its parts with a proportion of thin yet a little condensed fire for were it not a little dense it could not heat so that it is very like to the ambient ayr in substance and its other qualities 2. Supposing it to be an ayr we must conceive it to be continuous with the ambient ayr when the eyes are open This premitted I infer light to be nothing else but a continuous obduction of the Ayr caused by a flaming fire But let me here intreat your serious intention upon what I shall discover concerning the nature of Light it being one of the difficultest mysteries of all Philosophy and although its effects are luminous to the Eye yet its nature is obscure to the Understanding The search of this moved Plato to leave Athens and set saile for Sicily to speculate those flames of the mount AEtna Empedocles the Philosopher hazarded himself so far for to make a discovery of the nature of a flame and its light that he left his body in the Mongibell fire for an experiment although much beyond his purpose It is almost known to all how that the Learned Pliny took shipping from the promontory Misenas to be traversed to the Mount Pomponianus whither curiosity had driven him to fathom the depths of the Vesuvian flames but before he could feel the heat the smoak smothered him III. First then I prove that Light is an effect of a flame There is no flame but it causeth light and by the light we know it is a flame Ergo Light is an inseparable accident and a propriety quartimodi of a flame the Antecedence is undoubted Doth not a Candle a Torch a focall flame cause lights Or did you ever see light and doubted of the flame of it What is the reason when we hit our fore-heads against any hard thing we say there strikes a light out of our eyes It is because the violence of the stroke did discontinuate the optick ayr through which the condensed fire did unite and diduct the intrinsick ayr which was incrassated through the same stroke and so made a flame or rather a flash which is a sudden flame that is quickly lighted and quickly laid Secondly Light is not a single quality inhering in fire alone for were it so then where ever fire is there should be light but to the contrary we find that there is fire inherent in the ayr and many other bodies yet the ayr remains dark after the descent of the Planets 2. Were fire naturally light we could never be in darkness because the vast Region of fire is so large that it could not but illuminate thrice the extent of the ayr Thirdly Light is not fire rarefied and exporrected throughout all the dimensions of the ayr for who could ever imagine that a Candle being so small a flame should serve to be drawn out through the ayr and fill it with light to the extent of six or eight Leagues for a Candle may be seen at Sea in a clear dark night six or eight Leagues off or further so that it is absurd to imagine this and unworthy of a Philosophers maintaining it 2. It is impossible that fire could be so exactly mixt with ayr in an instant for so large an extent 3. There is never a particle of illuminated ayr but it is light to the full extent
only obducted in its extent according to the force of the flame and when it is so stretcht as it were through the fires obduction it receives the force of the flame partly only because it is contracted by expelling the extrinsick bodies contained within it so yields to the fires obduction The clearer the ayr is the greater light it makes because it containing no extraneous bodies cannot contract it self from the obtension of the fire by expelling such bodies but being totally continuous it is obtended so far as the said ayr is continuous and according to the force of the fire The reason then why a light is terminated is through the contraction of the ayr and oft times through the density of an intermediate body as of thick vapours and exhalations According to the diminution of the flame the ayr relaxes and so the light diminisheth V. The cause why a dense body is uncapable of generating a light is by reason it is contiguous and cannot be obducted or stretcht as it were I have said That that is light which moves our eye-sight even hence I wil sensibly prove to you that light is nothing but a continuous obduction of ayr Suppose that the optick spirits are for the greatest part an ayr to which the external ayr when the Eye-lids are open is joyned in continuity and becomes one continuous body with the optick ayr in a manner as when one float of water toucheth another they become continuately one Wherefore then when the ayr is continuously obducted as far as where it is continuated to our optick ayr it must necessarily also obduct and stretch the same optick ayr because it is continuous to it That light moves the sight by stretching the optick ayr is evident in that when we look against the light although its origin is far off we feel a stretching in our eyes 2. VVhen we have wearied our selves by seeing we complain that we feel a stretching in our eyes In case the ayr is not obducted so far as to reach our eyes then we do not see it as when a thing is out of sight the reason why we cannot see it although nothing is interposed to hinder is because its stretching doth not reach as far as our Eyes Hence you may observe that visus non fit emittendo sed recipiendo motum flammae sight is not actuated through the emission of beams from our sight but through the receiving of the motion of a flame and more through suffering patiendo non agendo than acting VI. The fire of a Flame is to some extent dispersed through the Ayr and so far it heats the Ayr nevertheless its enlightning is much further extended The Sun which is the greatest Flame its heat in the Summer reaches to us in a very intense quality its light would reach a hundred or more times further then it were the tract of the Ayr extended to a larger quantity but because it is not therefore its heat in the torrid Zone and in the temperate ones in the Summer reaches as far as its light which although it doth is not therefore to be accounted the essence of Light as some have simply imagined So that it was no less Mistake to believe that the Sun's light could be precipitated in a Glass and some to have collected of it no less then two Ounces and half a day The vertue of this Precipitate is described to penetrate into the substance of the hardest Metal I do believe that it is very possible to precipitate such small bodies constituted out of the fiery emissions of the Sun whose vertue cannot but be very penetrative through the predominance of fire in them but nevertheless it is not the light which is precipitated but fiery substances neither is fire the light it self but the cause of it Light is a property following the union of a flame with the Ayr wherefore the Ayr is rather to be taken for the principal Subject VII Light is not the primar cause of all the effects produced by the Stars but their temperament and exsuperating heat Accidentally or privatively their remoteness and remission of heat may be a cause of coldness and incrassation of the Ayr and consequently of its obscurity The light of the Sun doth not comfort the vital Spirits neither doth it act immediately upon them at all although through its heat it may help and excite the vital heat of some frigid temperatures The light hath only a power of acting immediately and per se upon the Optick spirits and through altering them may prove a mediate cause of Vital and Animal Alterations I prove it If you go forth out of the dark into the light you feel a distention or rather an obtension of your visive spirits return again out of the light into the dark and you will first perceive a relaxation and afterwards a contraction of your sight The mediated effect of light is a quickning of the Vital and Animal Spirits which are moved by continuation from the obtension of the Optick Ayr. A sudden great light causes a bursting of the Air which happens when the Air is so much obtended that it can stretch no more and then of a necessity it must burst A bursting is a sudden breaking of a body throughout all its dimensions and parts as it were The air is bursted through a great lightning or a flash before a thunder which if the same bursting do reach diametrically to the optick air of an open eye it will certainly blind yea sometime kill a man because the same bursting is continued unto and upon the optick spirits and sometimes is also further continuated that it bursteth the whole Treasure of the Animal spirits which necessarily must effect an Apoplexy A man coming forth suddenly out of the dark into a great light is often struck blind because his optick Spirits are bursted through the sudden and strong obtention or if it obtends the optick Air to the next lower degree so as it may not cause a bursting it then produceth a dazling of the sight that is an over-stretching of the optick spirits VIII How light renders all things visible is a matter worthy of Enquiry The air being thus obtended and made visible through light is terminated every where about by the surfaces of terminated bodies These terminated surfaces resist the obtended air and according to their several degrees of mixture or of fundamental light and darkness do attenuate refract diminish contract or condensate the obtension If the surface of the resisting object is continuous and weighty it attenuates and refracts or reflects the light of the air and of that nature is water for water being adunited to air in continuity doth not only sustain the obtension of the air but also through its reflexion obtends the obtended air yet more and so the obtension upon the water must be greater by reason it stops the obducted air more then any thing else wherefore its light is thinner but withal greater
of which it is made one in the subject and distinct from the subject out of which essence that property of visible is produced A manifest contradiction First he saith that an Accident hath alwaies a substance for its subject and yet in it self it hath a power and act Assuredly none will affirm a power to be in an accident but in the subject for to receive such an Accident this he alloweth himself for an accident saith he is alwaies in a substance as its subject ergo it hath its essence from a subject if then a subject giveth its essence it giveth praecedentia and consequentia esse it is then the power that is from the subject as also the act ergo an Accident is nothing but the subject modified 4. Constituting Principles as Matter and Form are required to exist at one time but the power and act cannot exist at one time for assoon as the act is advened the power is fled If then you assert it to be a principium generationis then the subject thus constituted doth consist of a Principle perse and another per accidens Besides it followes that an accident is an actus purus if so then an accident is more perfect then a man or an Angel Wherefore it appears that a colour is nothing else but a modification of a subject and of the same rank that other accidents are of besides that colour is exempted from a power and act and that the substance is rather to be conceived to be instructed with a power of being coloured The subsequent distinction confirms my Interpretation of his words For saith he light is an act of visibility that is it is an action upon a visible substance for visibility in the abstract being invisible he ought rather to have declared how a lucid substance acted through its modality or action upon our sense The same Scaliger in the said Dist. asserts that Light is neither white or whiteness No doubt it is no whiteness for that he never saw existent without a body unless it was a Spirit in his Fancy But the question is whether it is not white His Argument alledged against it is because it cannot be seen in the Air and doth not terminate the sight The former condition of his Reason is simpliciter necessary the latter is only necessary necessitate consequentiae by consequence I reply to his Argument 1. That light is visible in the air as I have shewed before 2. Light were it imaginable to inhere in an infinite subject it would be interminate and yet move the sight terminately for a man who is blinded by a thin Cataract knowes when it is day and when night because the light of the Sun moveth his Optick Air although very obtusely and yet he neither sees the termination of the Sun or of the Air. 3. Light is not invisible because of the thinness of the Air but visible because of its obductibility 4. The airs intermination is falsly supposed to be the cause of its invisibility for it is really terminate because a being and termination in the concrete are convertible Further it is evident that light must be necessarily terminated both in the body whence it is derived and in the body wherein it is received notwithstanding it is not alwaies necessary for us to perceive or see the lights termination in it self for that we seldom do although it is terminated in and by our sight According to our forestated definition light is accounted a colour but most single that is without any composition or reflection II. I call light a single colour not absolutely as if it were so in its own nature and constitution but because it moves our sight singly without representing any mixt colour with it to the sight This single motion of light is only its obtension continuated in the optick air is otherwise known by the name of an interminate Pellucid In case light be reflected and gathered in great quantity by air thickned and somewhat condensed by thin and by a little condensed clouds it produces a thick pellucid or whiteness in the air which continuated to the optick air produces the same whiteness there This we perceive when the Sun is said to shine which it doth ever when no thick dense clouds are interposed that its Raies are condensed by thin clouded air being a little condensed That the thin shining light is whitish is further apparent by the Peripatetick description of white White is a colour which doth most disperse the sight but so doth the Sun shining light ergo it is whitish Or according to others White is that which containeth much light ergo light is most white because propter quod unumquodque tale est illud magis tale est Light being the cause and fountain of white must be most white in it self III. Light Lumen is actus visibilitatis saith Scaliger that is it renders a visible thing visible But how not efficienter for then without light in the air there should be no fundamental colours and every colour must be produced through light at the moment of its appulse but as a medium or causa sine qua non As a medium in that it doth defer the ratio obductibilitatis of every Object to the eye The manner of it is thus every mixt colour is nothing else but the degree of the alteration of the mixt objects wrought upon the air by their greater or less pinching contracting or deading of it Supposing that the greatest extention of the ayr causes a pellucidness that which gathers contracts or deads the ayr a little and staies its obtension is white that which gathereth it yet more is yellow That which doth gather it most is black that which gathers it less is brown and so gradually This gathering of the obtended ayr by the objected mixt colour is a kind of a pinching whereby the ayr is continuately pinched to the extent of a certain Sphaere The ayr being pinched doth continuately pinch the optick ayr which if it be a little pinched by an objected colour it discerneth it to be white or if very much it discerneth it to be black hence when we enter into a mourning Room hung about with black cloath we perceive a perfect pinching or contraction in our Eyes Here may be demanded Whence this various manner of pinching proceeds since that pinching is caused by a solid object if so then the solider an object is the more it should pinch and consequently the blacker it should be which seems erroneous for Gold is of a yellow colour which otherwise should be blackest because it is the most solid of all bodies I answer That this various manner of pinching depends upon the degrees of the gathering of light or obtended ayr That which doth most gather or deads the ayr being a continuous or fluid body is a dense and contiguous body so that the more dense that a body is the more light it gathers and pinches the stronger and
of the Sun and in oyl or fat cast into focal fire burning white Here may be objected That Snow is white Ergo it should consist most of fire which it doth not I repeat my distinction of durable and changeable colours and affirm that whiteness depending upon fire is deprehended only in durable and compact permixt bodies the other inherent in changeable subjects and thin open bodies derives more from the ingredient light entring their pores where being a little pinched and collected appears white so that this may be thought to be as much the colour of the condensed light as of the body which lasteth no longer than it is condensed by condensed water and that being melted the colour vanisheth withall possibly you will turn your objection to a bone which being white doth not contain fire predominating in it I answer That a bone consists of much fire and ayr as appears in its flammability and therefore is white Lastly you may object That a Marble stone or Alabaster is white but neither are fiery I answer That both do consist of a condensed and attenuated water and not without a little rarefaction caused by the fire Suppose that Marble were only a natural water which as I have demonstrated is naturally thick and consistent like unto Ice and condensed with a little earth certainly it would be of a transparent and crystalline colour this Ice being yet more condensed by earth pinches and collects the light a little and so appears white Wherefore observe that this white is primarily an extrinsick colour depending on the incidence of light and not fundamental alone wrought by the internal temperature of the mixt body So that this objection doth conclude nothing against our Assertion mentioning intrinsick colours acting from a compact mixt body The reason why Marble and Alabaster are shining is because their body is consistent of a continuated substance to wit thick water Intermediate colours are such as arise out of the descent of the Elements from their extreams To wit thus The less there is of fire the less it is intrinsecally and fundamentally white the less there is of earth the more an object diminisheth in blackness Which degradations constitute the intermediate colours Intermediate colours are almost infinite but enumerating them according to the above-stated condition of Latitude of Colours they are vulgarly counted ten in number 1. Yellowish Subflavus 2. Yellow 3. Reddish Subruber 4. Red. 5. Greenish 6. Green 7. Blewish 8. Blew 9. Brownish 10. Brown Red is an equal mixture of Black and White and is the Center and middle of all colours being equally interjacent between the two extreams so that all colours are between Red and White and between Red and Black as appears in the subnext scheme of colours Before I proceed I will commend to you a very necessary distinction of intermediate colours which are either fundamental or extrinsick The fundamental intermediate colours are those that are constituted by the internally proportionated Elements in temperament and are compactly permisted The extrinsick colours are such as are as much imputable to the external incidence and ingredience of Light This premitted I say that a fundamental Red doth only consecute a body mixed and temperated ad pondus which was alone in the Chaos the noblest of colours befitting so noble a body Of those red colours which we now have a sanguine cometh nearest to it because it proceeds from the exactest temperature ad justitiam which is nearest to that ad pondus The change from this towards the extreams as before constitutes a different colour if to water its change is into a green as you may observe in the bloud of hydropick bodies appearing greenish if to air blewish as you see it doth in the clouds which is changed out of a Red Cloud being dispersed into a greater measure of air if to Harth Brown if to Fire Yellow which is manifest in Bloud turning to a Yellow if predominated by fire or Choller to Brown if predominated by Melancholy or Earth to Blew if attenuated or incorporated with predominant air Besides these there are many others which because approaching to some one of the forementioned I shall not think material to relate but refer you to Scaligers CCCXXVth Exerc. where you have the names of most colours set down What Splendor and the cause of it is you know already its opposite is a deadishness which as splendor is effected upon a smooth and continuated body so is this effected upon a ruggid and contiguous body Luminous and Opake are also Opposites The latter is distinguisht from black in that this is taken for a fundamental colour the other for an extrinsick privation of light VIII Reflection of light is the beating back or reaction of a splendid or thick body upon the obtended air which Reflection obtending and stretching the air yet more then it was before makes it apdear much lighter That it is made lighter is discerned by the eye which is more forcibly obtended by the reflected light which if it be much causes a dazling in the eyes and is nothing else but an over-retching of the optick air and Membranes and sometimes is so great that it presses water out of the eyes Reflection is only upon continuous bodies as Gold Silver Brass Steel Precious Stones Glass and Water c. IX Refraction of colours is a reflection seeming to be broke as when you put a Stick into the water the colour of it seems to be broke By an internal reflection its colour seems to be more augmented in quantity and extent of parts then really it is The manner of it is thus Mark that a superficial reflection doth not augment the extent of a colour which reflects the light for Gold or Crystal is not augmented in extent of colour that is seems not bigger then really it is by reflecting light superficially neither do they render a colour in the air bigger then it is 2. A double reflection is the continuation of a reflection for there is also a reflection of light within the very body of an object as you may see by a piece of Money cast into the water or big Sands lodged sometime within the center of a Diamond or Crystal causing a reflection although remote from the Surface wherefore a Colour is not well described by Arist. Lib. de Sens. Sensil to be the extremity of a terminated perspicuous body for I have told you where and how it may be visible in the intrinsick body of an Object Notwithstanding this Scaligers Objection in Exerc. 325. d. 4. against colour stated to be the extremity of an Object is invalid His Objection is because a Chesnut is coloured in the middle as well as in its extremity ergo saith he Colour is not the extremity But how did he know a Chesnut to be coloured in the middle Questionless by seeing it cut through if so then that middle cut through is now come to be the extremity so there
water upon the Surface moveth but very slowly towards the side near the hole because the water moving so swiftly underneath doth cause that atop to sink upon it which prevents its swift motion towards the side and that which causeth the water underneath to spout so violently out of the hole is the weight of the water atop pressing violently and forcibly downwards This occasions me to call to memory that apposite Phrase of the Dutch sea-men who instead of saying the water ebbs say Het water sackt that is the water sinks as if they would signifie the water to move from underneath The Ocean then originally and primarily moving from underneath in a very swift current as the forementioned instance may easily confirm to us hath not that extent to overrun there which we might conceive it would have atop but is above the half shortened in its periphery through its depth and consequently through the deep excavation or extenuation of the Earth Wherefore observe 1. That the Ocean underneath doth well absolve so many degrees as we have writ down before but then they are much abbreviated and lessened in comparison to those degrees whereby the superficial circumference of the water is measured 2. I say that the Ocean absolves the foresaid course of 348 in 12 equal hours only in its lower parts But as touching its superficial ones it is certain they are slow absolving the same compass in no shorter time than six months which may be named a Marinal year This slow progress is evidenced to us by the slow drift of a piece of wood floating in the Ocean 3. Although the superficial parts of the Ocean do not slow with so rapid a course yet it hinders not but that they may tumefie as they do throughout their whole circuit about the Earth in the space of 12 hours 4. Since it must necessarily follow that where the water tumefieth in one place it must sink in another therefore the water tumefying once every 12 hours in the East 6 houres long in which space it arriveth to its height it must sink as much in the VVest because that moisture which causeth the intumescence in the East doth slow underneath from the VVest By the same rule the Eastern Ocean must also sink 6 hours in every 12 for to cause a tumefaction in the VVest VVhence it is that every 6 hours we perceive a change of the Tide in the Ocean 5. VVe are not to perswade our selves that the Eastern floud is occasioned by water returning from the VVest and the western floud through the refluxe of the same water from the East because the Ocean doth continually pass from east to west by way of the South not returning the same way through the South from west to east as appeareth by the quick Voyages of those who setting sail with a good wind and weather from Spain towards the West-Indies do usually make land in three or four weeks whereas returning from thence can scarce recover Spain although having the wind very favourable in less than three or four months Likewise a voyage from Moabar in the Indies to Madagascar otherwise called St. Laurences Island may be accomplisht in 20 daies but from Madagascar to Moabar scarce in less time although with a very prosperous wind than three months In the same manner one may much sooner make a voyage from this Island to Spaine lying hence more eastward than from Spain back again hither or in sailing from Alicant a City of Spaine situated upon the Mediterranean Coast towards Palestina they usually make less speed than in returning All which are undoubted marks of the perennal course of the Ocean from East to west VVherefore Philosophers have been misled in imposing the names of Fluxus and Refluxus upon the course of the Ocean as if returning the same way it went I have taken notice that as the Dutch used a fit word for to denote the Ebb so the French have imposed another no less elegant upon the floud viz. La Montè de la Marè or the rising of the Sea exactly squaring with our foregoing discourse Thus when it is floud they usually say Lamarè il monte that is the Sea rises The Latinists call it AEstus Maris or heat of the Sea because when the Sea begins to be filled with hot exhalations it is wonted to be hot through which it swelleth like hot bloud flushing into our faces and glowing causeth a puffing up and a rising whence it is impelled to flow some part of it one way and another another way which caused the floud observed through the rising of the waters upon the shores These exhalations being dissipated the Sea beginning to cool withdraws it self again into its former compass and leaving the shores puts them in mind of the Ebb. But this dictate being proved to be absurd doth justly advise us to reject the forementioned name 6. VVe need not to doubt being fully informed of this Doctrine but that every floud brings in new water that of the last Ebb flowing forwards with the course of the Sea towards the accomplishment of its annual period 7. Let none be offended at us for granting an internall cause of the Seas motion against Scalig. Exer. 52. asserting the Sea to be an Animal in case it should be moved from an internal cause were this a Paradox we must then believe that the Air Fire Heavens and Stars are Animals they all moving through an intrinsick principle IV. My method doth now lead me to demonstrate the several Phoenomena's of the Ocean by their proper causes 1. The Ocean flowing from East to West cannot be thought to be the sole cause of the diurnal intumescence and detumescence of the Sea since it may be supposed to slow equally over an equal ground Wherefore a second cause must concur to wit an unequal ground or an unequal grove through which it passeth The waters being through the second division of the Creation separated from the Earth which then lay in an equal round figure under the waters these consequently equally covering it in the same figure were afterwards through the third division collected into one place where they must have pressed their great weighty body into two great universal groves whereupon the Earth must necessarily be pressed up into two great universal eminences which are divided from one another through the said waters and consequently constitute two great Islands viz. of the New world or America and the Old world or Asia Africa and Europa The Sea after this working through its great weight deeper and deeper into the Earth must necessarily thereby have formed many other deep and great cavities within the sald universal groves The Earth through whose recess or giving way the said other Cavities were impressed must needs have been compressed to some other part not towards the center because the Earth was so very densely beset there that it was impossible it should give way Ergo towards the Surface where it was
frequently happens near to the Moons quarters whose middle is marked by the Moons Full and New Aspect being when it flows with the greatest force causing the highest high waters and the lowest low waters and tends towards its ending when it remits from its height and intends in lowness This augmentation and diminution may be resembled to the fermentation of Wine or Beer swelling gradually untill its height and thence decreasing again Touching the beginning and ending of the Seas single diurnal circuit if we consider it simpliciter it hath none because it is ever in motion as never being eased by a total rest but if agreeing to state the beginning where the Ocean is slowest in its course and thence tending to a swifter motion then the Proposition is resolveable And according to this Supposition the beginning and ending must be moveable differing every single course near 11 degrees This by the way Returning to explain the cause of the gradual augmentation of water and intention of force I am to remember you of the great proportion of the Oceans peregrin Elements consisting of most Earth then Air and lastly fire of whose close coherence with the waters their saltness is an undoubted argument These salin particles violently detaining the waters from recovering the center must necessarily add force to the gravity of the waters and consequently in intending their force they must also augment them in quantity because the more force the waters use the more in quantity they bear along with them The detention of the said salin particles being at their beginning of no great strength or in no great quantity do therefore cause no great intention of the Oceans force but every single period piercing gradually by rarefaction upon the waters must necessarily also augment their tumefaction gradually higher and higher every day untill at last being arrived to their height of penetration which ordinarily happens in 15 circuits the Ocean is likewise elevated unto its height Some of these salin particles being penetrated through the body of the waters are gradually depressed to the ground through their own disposition and the weight of the Ocean others being attrited and confused through their passive motion against the water and the decess of their heaviest particles do more and more gradually desist from their violent detention every circuit returning to the bottom and so the Ocean doth also gradually every day incline nearer and nearer to its natural force and detumescence of its water untill it is returned to its own proper course at which season its force and intumescence are equally at their lowest During this space those subsiding particles begin again to be expanded rarefied and attenuated because of the grinding of the water against them and through the expansion of the aerial and igneous parts adunited to them do bear up again The others elevated atop beginning to concentrate through the conquiescence of the Sea are ready to be compressed downwards both which gradually striving a reciprocal meeting do in the foregoing manner gradually reunite the force and augmentation of the Water V. Here we cannot but admit the Suns intense hear every day beating down the torrid Zone to be a great instrumental and adjuvant cause to the stirring of the aforesaid salin particles But this continuing in one measure equality and station in respect to the torrid Zone all the year long cannot in any wise be thought the principal cause of a motion varying twice every day Likewise the Moon being beset with a great quantity of dampish and heavy particles doth every day spread down some of those particles whereby the Ocean is also gradually filled more more every day And like as these said particles are most apt to rain down the nearer the Moon doth appropinquate to the Ecliptick because the air enjoyeth a greater subtility there from the rarefaction of the Sun hence it is that the Moon frees her self most of these heavy concomitants near her Conjunction and at her apposition So they are most apt to ascend the further the Moon is declined from the Ecliptick as happens in her quarters when for that reason the waters are also at their lowest That these two Lights are accidental causes of the intention of the Oceans force and daily augmentation of its waters is plain enough and their mutual concurrence to the effecting of the same effect we have confirmed beyond all doubting whereby the absurdity of the Moons compression proposed by Des-Cartes and so disagreeing with his own position of the nature of the air is likewise set before you The Moon near her Conjunction makes very high waters because conversing with the hot rayes of the Sun sends down a great number of the foresaid bodies and not because she is impregnated with the light of the Sun whereby she should be grown more potent to excite vapours and exhalations This is ridiculous for we find other bodies to be swelled near that time not only through exhalations raised out of themselves but particularly through particles demitted by the conveyance of the air into their pores The like happens although in a weaker manner when the Moon is in her full Aspect because of her nearer approximation to the Ecliptick But much more in a Lunar Eclipse because she is then found directly in the Ecliptick And most of all yea twice higher than ordinary at the Full Moon of March and September because the Sun being then in the AEquinoxial and most directly over the torrid Zone under which the greatest body of the Ocean floats and the Moon in the same way near the Ecliptick must needs joyntly cause a vast decidence of the forenamed bodies intending and augmenting the waters Or to declare the matter plainer to you The continuation of the Seas Motion forward is not only depending upon the pulsion of succeeding parts bending by refraction naturally forward but also by a kind of attraction or suction of preceding parts thus Suppose the Earth to be excavated into certain great cavities like to great pipes whereof of those that are formed from the East towards the West by the South the furthermost are alwaies deeper and longer than those which are nearest to the East Likewise conceive such Cavities framed in the same proportion to one another from West back again to the East by the North Now I say that the deepest and furthermost cavity must alwaies attract the water out of the shallower and lesser in the same manner as the longer pipe of a sucker a Siphon as some do call it must attract all the moisture of the shorter because the parts of water being continuous and consequently cleaving to one another the lesser part must follow and yield to the greater the which through its crastitude being pressed forwards must also draw the lesser part after Since then the water is no sooner arrived into one cavity but is thence drawn into another hence it is that this tumefaction of waters is not sensible to us in the Ocean
cause of the multitude of Hills in some Countries and scarcity in others 8. How it is possible for the Sea to penetrate into the bowels of the earth I. THe opinion of Fountains scattering out of the earth and supplied by waters rained down and collected within Caverns of the earth as it hath vulgarly taken place among many so it is very suspitious experience tells us that many perennal Fountains spring forth out of sandy and every where about dry Mountains whereunto notwithstanding but little is contributed by the moisture of the heavens since the rain falleth but seldom as in AEgypt and other places and the Sun is very hot the Country very dry insomuch that did the rain fall in twice that quantity it would scarce be sufficient to irrigate the soile much less of supplying moisture for Fountains 2. Many Fountains draw their water very deep near a hundred foot yea two or three hundred deep out of the earth Whereas rain seldom penetrates deeper into the earth than ten or eleven foot 3. Some Fountains break forth out of Rocky Mountains which are uncapable of imbibing rain Ergo their rice and continuation are not from rain II. The opinion of Aristotle is much more absurd asserting subterraneous air converted into water to be the cause of Springs since we have formerly made it appear that the conversion of air into water is impossible or were it not it would seem very irrational to suppose the earth to be so hollow as to be capable of containing such an infinite quantity of air as to continuate the course of a Fountain because a great quantity of air condensed as they call it would produce but little more than a drop III. 1. In brief Fountains owe their beginning and continuation to great quantities of water collected within great Caverns of the earth This the diggers of Mines confirm to us who sometime through digging too deep meet with great and sudden burstings out of waters which oft do prove perennal Such mischances have hapned not once in the Coal-pits near Newcastle to the drowning of many a man Moreover there are no great hills but which rest upon great gulphs of water underneath them insomuch that a hill is nothing else but the raising of the earth through a great gulph of water lodging underneath it Hence it is that hills are generally the store-houses of Rivers and their sides or tops their Springs How many slouds of water are there discovered to break out of the sides of several great hills in Kent Surrey and innumerous other places of the world Whence should those pregnant Pewter Mines in Cornwal or Lead Mines in Derbishire and all other Mines in the world be supplied with a sufficient quantity of water for their matter were it not that the hills afforded it out of their Caverns Whereout should all those vast stony and rocky Mountains of the Universe consist but out of water derived from the Earths bowels Whence should those great perennal Rivers that spout forth from under the Alpes and Peruvian Mountains take their rice but from those gulphs of water whereby they are raised to that height Whence should all the water of those great Lakes upon hills arrive As that between the middle of the three tops of the hill Taihu in China whose depth was yet never fathomed and that upon the Mount Jenkin near the City So being of no less depth and near a quarter of a Mile in compass likewise that of Tieuchi near Mien that deep Lake upon the Mount Tienlu called the Lake of the Drake because it is so horrible through its depth and commotion that if any should cast a stone into it it would render a great noise like unto a thunder besides many others in Europe as those in Ireland c. In fine do not all the greatest Rivers of the world viz. Ganges Nilus Senaga Nuba Tana Nieper Morava Garumna Thames c. yea and all others spout out of hills or are they not derived from Lakes Lakes usually are environned by a Plain because those waters which should thrust up hills about them are collected in an open Cavern Notwithstanding are the same waters of Lakes through the ait's pressure forced underneath into the earth where at some distance they do cast up hils for to disburden the earth whereat they spout out Rivers for a Lake is uncapable of it self to spout out a River because being situated low wants force to spout it out from it whereas waters that are protruded and continually impacted and crusht very thick or close into Caverns of hills do by a renitency press against the earth above and below and swallow up the air contained within the said Caverns into their substance and the earth doth reciprocally press against them but the air being thin smooth and glib is at last violently protruded by both their gravities which erupting with a great force and discontinuation of the earth doth make way upwards for the water to be pressed out the easier by the earth with such a force as may square to the protruding of a long River Wherefore it is necessary that Rivers should derive either immediately or mediately from hills Thus immediately the Rhein springs forth out of the Mount Adula aliás Vogel The Danow out of a Mount within the black wood some 6 Leagues off from Tubingen The Necker out of another near the same Town The Garona out of one of the Perinean Mountains The Jaxartes out of the Sogdian Mountains as Ptolomy names them The Dnieper out of some Mountains near Dnieperco The River of Jordan out of two Issues of the Mount Lebanon viz. Jor and Dan both which meeting communicate in one name of Jordan The River Euphrates out of the Mount standing in the midst of the Garden of Eden The Boetis in Spain out of the Mount Orespeda near Castao The Anien out of the Mountains among the Trebani the Zepusium out of some Mountain in Poland and so a million of others Mediately The River of Nile descends out of some Hills that draw their water out of the Lake Zembre The River Niger salies vigorously out of some hills near the Lake Borno whose Caverns are filled the length of threescore Leagues under ground by streams flowing out of a Lake between Guidan and Vangue The River Nuba out of Mountains deriving their water from the Lake Nuba and in like manner many others Touching narrow short Rivers that flow from their head downwards to a low place they may draw their rice immediately from a Lake because they need not that vigour of impulse IV. Holland and Zealand although very rich in water yet are poo◠in Mountains because their ground is so much thorow soakt and masht with water that being changed into a mud it would sooner break into crums than be raised up into hills Wherefore the name of Holland was very aptly imposed upon that Countrey since that underneath it is hollow filled up only with water the
from the Chaos How it was freed from the oppression of the weighty Elements I formerly declared The remainder is to treate briefly of its commerce with the neighbouring Elements viz. with Earth Water and Fire Daily observations make appear to us that a cavity is no sooner ready to open within the Earth or Water but the Air is as ready to strive to enter not only for to fill up that vacuity but out of an eagerness strife and necessity for to gain a Center for its whole body For how can any body enjoy rest without being sustained by a foundation That which is alone apt for such a work is the Center which is a Basis upon which all its parts do rest I prove it The parts of a body being met about the Center cannot use any force or violence against one another because they are of one nature and therefore agree in the same effect Which is of resting about a Center Hence it is That the air besides its own interest being streightned atop through the fires inclination also for to recover its Center doth so much infest pierce attenuate and divide all bodies that lye in the way to its Center and that so vast a proportion of air is entered into the body of water as from a solidity to reduce it to a perfect fluor And although the body of air as I have stated before is of that softness yet through succession of its parts and want of vacuities whereinto to convey it self it cannot yield to any compression into it self but being successively backt by its own parts and those of fire is capable of working the same effects which the hardest body can But now supposing the air to have accomplisht its aime let us inquire what motion it would then exercise Certainly of it self no other but it s continuous lightness whereby it would maintain its parts diffused from its own center into the greatest tenuity imaginable Likewise the other Elements would exercise no other action but the maintenance of their bodies in the greatest density crassitude or rarity and that through the use of their formal contiguous weight continuous weight contiguous levity and as the earth through her concentration would not leave the Circumference although tending hence thither so neither would the light Elements desert their Center although moving thence hither Wherefore let me advertize you in time not to mistake my former definitions of Levity or Gravity implying the former to move from its Center to the Circumference that to move here from the Center is not to leave it but to move thence as from a Basis But now the air being dispossest of its genuine Center is forced to make use of a violent Center situated about the extream parts of the earth and water and thence its parts do take their original to the circumference not leaving their force in the mean while of pressing violently downwards Here may be inquired why the air seeming so far powerful above the earth and water both in extent of compass and energy or activity of parts that its extream subtility should seem more than potent enough to pervade dispossess that small clot of water and earth doth not become victorious I resolve you The energy of the air is much refracted through having its Center upon which all its strength doth consist divided into that dimension which the Circumference of earth and water do make or otherwise it would soon toss that small footbal out of its place and make no more of it than the Heavens may seem to do of the Moon So fire although a great part is flaming and burning hath not the power of invading the earth as many do imagine it would do were the Heavens all a burning fire because it is much more refracted in its Center through the Surface of the air Do we not see that a Durgain is able to wrastle with a great Giant because his low stature doth put him in a capacity of taking the other about the middle where he easily lifts him from his Basis or Center But possibly it may seem strange to you that the air should exercise two contrary motions one upwards and another downwards 2. You may likewise demand how fire can apply any force to earth or water since it is extended into its greatest rarity and possesses a place full large enough to contain its body and consequently is not violently detained To the first I answer That naturally a thing cannot obtain two contrary motions but violently it may As to the second This violence is caused here below 1. Through the incrassation of the air that is water ascending and mingling with the body of air doth force so much of it to strive for another place as it hath taken up of the air which since it cannot procure upwards is forced to effect downwards upon the earth and water and make a violent irruption upon them 2. The air being essentially thin in the second Region as well as it is above must of necessity press down upon the incrassated air because all its parts being to take their suffulsion and Basis from somewhere which it doth from the hither extremity of the air and not proving strong enough to sustain such a force must necessarily depress into the water and earth where neither of these finding themselves strong enough about their surface do necessarily yield and give way to the air pressing downwards for a Basis. The same contrary motion is apparent in a man who is to lift some weight from the ground upwards First he must move all his strength towards his feet which is the Center whereupon this weight must be sustained and lifted up from then doth he reflect all his strength upon that Basis upwards where we observe his center to make a hole into the earth because it is not firm enough to sustain his pressure even so it is with the twofold motion of air which you may easily apply to this in every particular II. The airs innixe being shoved off or refracted through the repercussion of the weighty Elements chooses to turn round that is to bear to the sides rather than to retort into it self And that which irritates this with no obtuse spur is the fire forcing circularly upon the air 2. The universal waters flowing from East to West is no small cause of directing of the airs motion towards the same aime because the air reflecting against the waters flowing from underneath must needs be shoved off thither whither the water flowes I prove it cast a ball from the shore upon a piece of Timber driving down a rapid River its refracted motion will tend towards the drift of the said River 3. The fire moving from East to West and forcing upon the air must beyond all scruple prescribe the air a road in its motion In the next place I prove that the air is agitated in a circular motion 1. If waters that are thick are impelled to a circular
swallowed up in the Island AEnaria another in Thrace one in Phaeuicia beyond Sidon and another in Eubaea Others protrude a great piece of earth and cast it up into a kind of mountain but a very uneven one as for instance the mount Modernus near the Lake Avernus This sort is called Egestion Some cast forth a flame withall as hapned in the Mount Vesevus alias the Mount of Somma in Campania and the Mongibell in Sicily Earthquakes have sometimes removed two opposite fields and placed them in one anothers room as those two fields in Italy where the Marrucini were seated in the Reign of Nero. For Rivers to burst out as the River Ladon in Arcadia did and others to be stopt up by earth cast into them by such accidents is very possible Oft times Earthquakes make way for Deluges which may be also incident upon the earth at the bottom of the Sea or near to the shore or may happen to the same places without a deluge whereby the waters have been swallowed up and Ships left dry upon the shore as that which hapned in the time of Theodosius or that vvhen M. Antonius and P. Dolabella vvere Consuls leaving great heaps of fish dry upon the sands In the Reign of Emanuel there vvas a very great Earthquake perceived about Lisbon Scalabis and other Tovvns of Portugal vvhereby the vvaters of the River Tajo vvere so much diffused that the bottom appeared dry There is another kind of Earthquake called Arietation vvhen tvvo subterraneous vvinds vibrate against one another Sometimes this hapned vvithout any dammage there being some earth betvveen to hinder their conflict other times meeting in cavernous places have subverted mountains and all that vvas upon them as those mountains near Modena vvhich Pliny lib. 2. Cap. 83. relates to have been bursted against one another vvith a very hideous noise subverting many Villages and swallowing up a number of Cattel yea whole Countries and Armies have been devoured by these kinds of accidents 2. From their duration some lasting a day a week a month c. 3. From their violence some inferring little or no dammage others being contented with nothing less than ruine 4. From the sounds that accompany them being various as I have related before 5. From their places Some more frequently infesting Islands others the Continent Thus Sicily AEnaria Lucara the Moluccas Islands Tyrus Eubaea Phrygia Caria Lydia Italy and many Countries in the West-Indies have very oft been molested by Earthquakes Cold Countries as the Septentrional ones or others that are very hot as AEgypt are very seldom invaded by them 6. From their efficient some being extraordinarily raised by the Almighty out of his wrath for to punish the sons of men for their sins an instance of this we have in 2 Kings 22. Likewise that which hapned about the time of the Passion of Christ supposed by many as Didymus and others to have been universall and to have shaken the whole Earth but since Ecclesiastick Historians make no mention of it none is bound to give credit to the foresaid Supposition However beyond all dispute it was a very great one if not the greatest that ever the earth underwent Neither is Paulus Oros to be thought more authentick relating lib. 7. hist. Cap. 32. an universal Earthquake in the time of Valentinianus since the holy Scripture and Reason do tell us that the Earth is altogether immoveable 7. From the consequents viz. Some after the earths eruptions are followed by vehement winds emptying out of her others by hot boyling waters others again by damps and stinking sents also by vomiting up of stones clots of earth and other strange bodies 8. From their extent some reaching farther others nearer Thus there hapned an Earthquake in the year 1577 on the 18th day of September that began from Colmar in Switzerland and reached as far as Bern being near upon 60 miles distant c. III. Now it is requisite I should proffer proof for the forementioned causes of Earthquakes 1. I prove that they are caused by winds because they alone are of a capable force to burst out suddenly through the earth 2. Because winds bursting out of the earth do alwaies precede and consecute Earthquakes whence we may certainly collect when waters in Pits and Rivers begin to be turgid and continually raised into a great number of bubbles that an Earthquake is near at hand as appeared by the swelling and bubling of the River Po a little before the before alledged harthquake of Ferrara 2. That these winds are principally raised out of peregrin water collected within a Cavern of the earth is evident by the great spouting out of water that doth follow the eruption 3. It is further made evident in a bottle half filled with water and exposed to the fire which doth also make good to us that the Sun through its fiery minims doth press in a great proportion of air into those subterraneous waters whereby they are attenuated whence those waters that are cast forth presently after the diruption are also rendred boyling hot so that Countries remote from the energy of the Sun are seated beyond danger of having winds generated within their bowels however subterraneous fires may supply the office of the Suns beams in attenuating the waters into winds by impelling air into them whence it is that near the mount Hecla in Iseland concussions and arietations happen frequently Earthquakes are disposed to eruption in the night season as much as in the day because as the erupting force of the internal winds is intended by the Suns rarefaction so is the compressing vertue of the Earth intensed by the more potent sinking down of the air in the night being freed from the discontinuating fiery minims and by the decidence of the weighty minims inherent in the Air. The Spring and Autumn are Seasons of the year qualified for the attenuating and rarefying of the peregrin waters whence also they prove most frequent near those times Why Hills and hilly Countries are subject to tremors and concussions and other moist ones as Holland and Zealand less may easily be understood from our discourse upon the generation of Hills IV. That Earthquakes portend Famine Pestilential Feavers and other contagious diseases is believed by most Grave Authors but whence such a putrefaction causing the said distempers should arrive to the air cannot vvell be deduced from their assigning exhalations to be the causes of Earthquakes since they hold them to be hot and dry being qualities according to the Peripateticks resisting and expelling putrefaction beyond any wherefore it will be most agreeable to hold with us that it is derived from those moist damps and vapours that are the material causes of the disrupting winds CHAP. XVII Of fiery Meteors in the Air. 1. Of the generation of a Fools fire a Licking fire Helens fire Pollux and Castor a Flying Drake a burning Candle a perpendicular fire a skipping Goat flying sparks and a burning flame 2. Of the generation
of Thunder Fulguration and Fulmination and of their effects Of a thunder stone 3. Of Comets Of their production I. THose vapours that are elevated into the air oft contain no small proportion of sulphureous particles within them which if concreasing through their own positive coldness and privative coldness of the night into a low cloud Nebula in the lowermost parts of the lower Region do compress those sulphureous particles otherwise termed exhalations and distinguisht from vapours because in these water and air are predominant in the others condensed fire and incrassated air towards the Center where uniting are converted into a flame by extending the incrassated air through their condensed fire This flame possibly appears like unto a Candle playing and moving to and fro the air and thence is also called a fools fire or Ignis Fatuus seu erraticus because it proves sometimes an occasion of leading Travellers that are belated out of their Road for by their coming near to it the air is propelled which again protrudes the flame forwards and so by continuing to follow it imagining the same to be some Candle in a Town or Village are oft misled into a ditch or hole Or if they go from it when they are once come near the light will follow them because in receding they make a cavity which the next succeeding air accurs to fill up The generation of these lights is more frequent near muddy Pools Church-yards and other putrid places that abound with such sulphureous bodies The said sulphureous parts if being of a less density condensed and united by the dense wool of a mans cloathes or hair or the hairs of a Horse or Oxe and the foresaid coldnesses it takes fire at the forementioned places but flames so subtilly that it is uncapable of burning This sort of Meteor is called an Ignis lambens a licking fire because it slakes then here then there like to spirits of Wine flaming Helens fire sidus Helenae so called because as Helen occasioned the ruine of Greece and Asia so this kind of flaming fire adhering to the shrowds or Yards of a Ship is usually a messenger of the Ships perishing If this flame appears double it is distinguisht by a double name of Castor and Pollux which are generally construed to bring good tidings of fair weather But these kinds of prognostications are very uncertain They may precede storms and may appear without the consequence of tempests For there is no necessity for either This generation depends upon exhalations condensed and united between the Ropes and the Masts or the Yards A flying Drake Draco volans is a flame appearing by night in the lowest Region of the air with a broad belly a small head and tail like unto a Drake Its matter is the same with the former differing in quantity alone and figure so framed through the figure of its containing cloud In the upper part of the lower Region of the air are produced 1. A falling Star representing a Star falling down from the Heavens 2. A burning Lance expressing the Image of a flaming Lance. 3. A burning Candle fax 4. A Perpendicular fire or fiery pillar trabs seu ignis perpendicularis seu pyramis representing a flaming beam or pillar 5. A flaming Arrow bolis 6. A skipping Goat Caprasaltans is a flame more long than broad glistering and flaking about its sides and variously agitated in the air like the skipping of a Goat 7. Flying sparks moving through the air like the sparks of a Furnace 8. Flamma ardens seu stipulae ardentes or a great burning fire suddenly flaming in the air like those fires that are kindled out of a great heap of straw All these depend upon a grosser material cause being somewhat more condensed and united than the former through a greater privative coldness and therefore they are also more durable A falling Star obtains its production near the permanent clouds and being somewhat weighty through earthy minims and rarefying the air through its heat breaks through and falls down lower untill it is arrived to a thicker cloud where nevertheless it doth not abide long in its flame The others procure their figure from their proportion of mixture and shape of the ambient cloud II. Thunder is a great rebounding noise in the air caused through the violent bursting out of incrassated air and condensed fire being suddenly kindled into a flame the manner cause of this eruption you may easily collect from the manner of the eruption of winds How a sound is produced I have set down before The differences of Thunders are various Some are only murmuring without a multiplication of sounds caused through a less proportion of fire and air bursting through a less dense and thick cloud Others raise a great cracking noise hapning through the acuteness of the sound smartly dividing the air and clouds wherever it reaches Lastly some are great hollow sounds variously multiplied hapning through the reflection and refraction of other dense and thick clouds driving in the way Besides these there might be accounted many more differences of Thunders raised through the proportion of air and fire that burst out and the various mixtures of clouds Fulguration or a flashing is fire condensed raised into a flame through incrassated air within a cloud and breaking out from it This scarce effects any great noise because of its subtility although in some it doth Fulmination or Lightning differs from the former only in intention in that it is much more forcible reaching to the ground and piercing into it and other terrestrial thick dense bodies and is more augmented in matter It is ordinarily a concomitant of Thunder both being produced at once although not perceived by us together we seeing the Lightning before we hear the Thunder because a visible object is much swifter communicated to the eye than a sound to the ear as appears in spying a man a far off chopping of wood we seeing His Axe go down before we hear the noise the reason of this I have inserted above A Lightning is either vibrating and is next to Fulguration in intention passing more subtilly Or discutient consisting somewhat of a denser fire and causing a greater Thunder 3. Or burning consisting of the densest fire causing the greatest Thunder and oft melting a Sword in the Scabberd or Moneys in a Bag and the Scabberd and Bag remaining undamaged The reason is because the rarity of these gave a free passage to the Lightning whereas the crassitude and density of the others did stay and unite the passing aduting flame Strong men and beasts are oft killed through an aduring Lightning whereas women and children do escape because the bodies of these latter being laxe and porous suffer the said flame to pass without any great resistance whereas the crassitude of the other bodies do unite and collect it through which their vital heat is quite dispersed having no other apparent sign either within or without their bodies of so
the way VI. Before I go on any further I will prove that such a vast measure of fiery winds blows down from each of the Polar Regions for six months together It is certain That a great proportion of fiery clouds is cast from the middle or Equinoctial of the fiery Heavens towards the Poles because there they are the strongest as appears by their strong and swift motion measuring more way by far there than about the Polars wherefore the greatest part of those fiery clouds must necessarily be detruded towards the Polars as being the weaker parts of the heavens and therefore the apter for their reception These clouds being obtruded thither in great quantities are compressed by the force of the Superiour heavens whereby the condensed fiery minims break forth in great showers which blowing constantly for six months do alwaies blow the Sun from them towards the opposite side 2. If clouds of the air are most detruded towards their Polars and blow thence constantly for a long season as Mariners tell us they do Ergo the same must happen in the fiery Region since the efficient causes and materials are corresponding 3. The fiery Region pressing strongly about the middle parts must needs cast up most air towards the Polars 4. Before there can be an eruption of these fiery clouds there must a certain abundance or proportion be collected through whose over possession and exceeding swelling they may sooner give way to burst out and then being opened they continue their fiery winds for six months and by that time they are quite evacuated In the mean time the other Polar side is a filling and is just grown swell'd enough for to burst out against the other is exhausted Here may be objected That whilst one Pole is evacuating it should attract all the matter from the other Pole because it gives way whereas the other cannot I answer That those fiery clouds through their giving way are still daily somewhat supplied by the continual casting up of the heavens for otherwise their ventilation could hardly be so lasting but however that is sooner evacuated than the clouds can be shut up again so that the ventilation lasteth untill all its contained matter is expelled 2. It is impossible that the air should be attracted from the opposite side since the greatest force of the middle parts of the inferionr Region is between which screweth the matter up equally towards each Pole VII The Suns deficient motion that is when he is accidentally moved through the succession of the Constellations of the Zodiack if compared to himself is observed to be regular that is in comparing one tropical or deficient course with another both do agree in the measure of space being over-runned in an equal time viz. of 360 Solar daies and in an equal Velocity moving in the same swiftness through the same Constellations in one year that he doth in another But if the particular motions of one defective or tropical course be referred to others of the same annual motion we shall find that the Sun is more potently withheld under the Meridional Signs than under the Septentrional ones That is moves swifter through the Austral Mediety in the Winter consuming but 178 daies 21 hours and 12 minut in that peragration and flower through the Boreal Signs in the Summer spending 186 daies 8 hours 12 minutes computing with the Vulgar 365 daies 5 hours 49 min. 16 sec. in the year so that the difference is 7 daies and 11 hours 2. The Sun appears sometimes at some seasons of the year higher then at others that is sometimes nearer to us and other times farther from us or otherwise the Sun is at the highest and farthest in the Summer in the month of June being then in Cancer and at the lowest or nearest in the moneth of December being then in Capricorn VIII The greatest declination of the Sun hath formerly in the daies of Hipparchus Ptolomy been observed to be of 23 deg 52 mi. which according to Copernicus his observation is reduced to 30 min. by others since to 28. The cause is evident and is to be imputed to the Suns or rather the fiery Regions gaining upon the inferiour Elements namely the water gains upon the earth and diducts her mole the air gains upon them both and insufflates their bodies and lastly the fire gains upon the air through which means it must necessarily incline nearer to the Center of the Earth which approximation must cause a diminution of the Suns declination For instance suppose the Sun in Hipparchus his time to have been at the height of o being then in his greatest declination from the Equinoctial a b if then since through the fiery Regions having gained upon the other Elements the Sun is descended from o to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 being there nearer to the Center of the Earth his greatest declination in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 must needs be less to ε than it is from o to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 IX Hence we may easily collect the duration of the World thus If the fiery Region hath gained from the time or years of Ptolomy to Copernicus so many minutes of the other Elements in how many years will the fire gain the restant minutes This being found out by the rule of proportion will resolve us when the World shall be returned again into a confusion or Chaos so that you may observe as at the beginning of the world the weighty Elements did gradually expell and at last over-power the light ones so the light ones do now gradually gain upon the weighty ones and at last will again over-power them and so you have a description of the long year consisting of 20 thousand Solar Circuits gaining near a degree every 68 years but towards the latter end will prevail much more because the nearer they incline the more forcibly they will make way And so you see all things are like to return to what they were viz. The immortal souls of men to God and the Universe in o the same Chaos which as I said formerly will abide a Chaos to all Eternity unless God do divide it again into a new World and raise new Bodies for the Souls that have of long been in being At the latter end of this descent you shall have Christ descending in the greatest Triumph Glory and Splendor appearing in a body brighter than the Sun Here must needs happen a very great noise and thunder when the Elements do with the greatest force clash against one another which cannot but then strike the greatest amazement and anguish into the Ears of the Wicked This Doctrine may prove a plain Paraphrase upon those mysteries mentioned in the Revelation of St. John For instance Chap. 9. v. 1 2. where a Star is described to fall down from heaven namely the Sun opening the bottomless pit and raising a smoak viz through his burning and consuming rayes c. No wonder if mens fancies are so strongly missed in
a Board or Ship upon the water Because the water being continuously thick coheres together and will not suffer her self to be divided whereby they happen to be lifted up by the water VI. Whether all hard waterish bodies are freed from fire No For although a slame is extinguisht by them yet that hinders not but that fire may be contained within them in particles and close shut up between their pores This appears in Crystal which being smartly struck by another hard body doth emit sparks of slaming fire from it like unto a Flint So neither is Ice it self bare within its pores of some small particles of fire CHAP. III. Comprizing Problems touching the Air. 1. Whether Air be weighty 2. Whether a Bladder blown up with wind be heavier than when empty 3. Why water contained in a beer glass being turned round with ones hand doth turn contrary against the motion of the Glass 4. Why a breath being blown with a close mouth doth feel cool and efflated with a diducted mouth feel warm 5. Why an armed point of an Arrow groweth hot in being shot through the air 6. Why Beer or Wine will not run out of the Cask without opening a hole atop 7. What difference there is between an Oricane and a Travada 8. Whether it be true that Winds may be hired from Witches or Wizards in Iseland 9. Why is it quieter in the night than in the day I. VVHether Air be weighty Answ. Air considered as enjoying its Center is light and doth not participate of any weight since it would only move from the Center to the Circumference and ever force extraneous bodies upwards Ergo Air absolutely conceived is only light 2. Air in its present state is also weighty but accidentally only and not essentially because of its sinking downwards towards the Center II. Whether a Bladder blown up with wind be heavier than when empty Answ. There hath been trial made of this to wit of the weight of a bladder blown up by Bellows atop of a high hill in a pair of Scales and it was found that an empty bladder weighed heavier than one filled with wind the same is also deprehended by casting them both into the water where we shall find the empty bladder first to be equal with the Surface of the water and afterwards to sink down a little whereas the windy one swimmeth atop The cause is by reason a bladder extended by the air within is supported by it and being rendred more porous and subtil through its obduction the air doth easily pass without any resistance and therefore doth not depress it so much as an empty bladder which through its corrugation and lesser diduction is more dense and therefore receiving the depressing force of the air much stronger besides being more acute is apter for to cut through the inferiour air whereas a bladder blown up is obtuse and doth as it were swim in the air But if a bladder be blown up with ones breath then doubtless it will prove heavier than an empty one because of the vaporous or heavy waterish air contained within III. Why doth the water contained in a beer glass being turned round with your hand turn contrary against the motion of the glass the same is observed in rouling a barrel full of water where the liquor turns contrary against the barrel Ans. The water is here detained flat or held fast by the air sinking down whence it is that the water seems to move against the motion of the Vessel being glib or slippery and smooth and therefore not detaining the vessel in its motion IV. Why doth a breath being blown with a close mouth feel cool and efflated with a diducted mouth feel warm Answ. Because the breath or incrassated air of a close mouth is more united and longer continuated whereby it doth vigorously puffe the ambient air whose compression felt causes cold as I have explained it in Book 1. Part 2. Now through the union of the incrassated air that is efflated the hot minims of the breath are deeply and equally impressed into the substance of the vaporous air whence their vertue is also suppressed but in breathing of the said air out of an open mouth the fiery minims do come forth in troops unequally and but superficially mixt in or supported by the said incrassated air whence they abide energick besides the air being but little puffed makes little or no compression Hence you may also collect a reason why the air doth refrigrate being agitated with a Fan. V. Why doth an armed point of an Arrow grow hot in being shot through the air Answ. Because its body and pores are somewhat opened by the air grinding against it whereby its fiery parts procure an occasion of being unired and condensed This doth also resolve us why a Knife being smartly whetted emits sparks of fire or why a Flint being struck hard against a piece of Steel doth likewise sparkle fire from it viz. because its solid parts are opened and disjoyned through the concussion whereby the fiery minims happen to be united and condensed Likewise many cold bodies by being chawed or contrited do afterwards grow hot VI. Why will not Beer or Wine run out of the Cask without opening a hole atop Answ. Because of the continuous adhesion or cohesion of the continuous parts of the liquor to the continuous parts of the Cask but as soon as it is averruncated divided and impelled downwards by the air entring at the upper hole it runs freely out of the Tap. That it is the air entring atop which presseth out the liquor is apparent by the cavity atop which the fore-impulse of the air entring causeth VII What difference is there between an Oricane and a Travada Answ. An Oricane is usually much more violent and therefore also much less lasting bursting down circularly from all parts like to a Whirlwind A Travada is more lasting and less violent and erupts directly down from one tract and in no wise circularly which as it oft rages upon the Seas off the shores of Coramandel Manicongo Guiny c. so the former is more frequent in the West-Indian Climates VIII Whether it be true that Winds may be hired from Witches or Wizzards in Iseland Answ. It is certain that the Winds blow very variously and manifold about that Island insomuch that it is not rare to see Ships sailing several courses at once all of them being equally favoured by a good wind The cause of this being vulgarly not known hath occasioned people to brand the old men and women there with Witchcraft whom the roughness of the air may cause to look rugged like the devils correspondents selling the winds by retail The causes of this variety are great winds erupting oft out of several holes of the earth about the Island especially about the Mount Hecla which many believe to be the mouth of hell because of those prodigious thunders and murmurings of winds that are perceived thereabout IX Why is it
quieter in the night than in the day Answ. Because in the day the air being fluid and continuous is agitated into waves by the Suns fiery beams whose bodies clashing together cause a small noise in the day which the night season is freed of CHAP. IV. Containing Problems touching the fire 1. Why doth water cast upon unquencht chalk or lime become boyling 2. Why doth common salt make a cracking noise when cast into the fire 3. Who were the first inventers of Gunpowder 4. VVhat are the Ingredients of Gunpowder 5. VVhence arrives all that flaming fire that followeth the kindling of Gunpowder 6. Whence is it that Gunpowder being kindled in Guns erupts with that force and violence I. VVHy doth water cast upon unquencht chalk or lime become boyling Answ. Because fire in lime is detained or imprisoned within a thick glutinous moisture which being attenuated through the thinner moisture of water is forced to suffer the igneous parts before dispersed and imprisoned to unite whence being condensed and incompassed by a thin glutinous air is changed into a hidden flame whereby the water is rendred boyling hot II. Why doth common salt make a cracking noise when cast into the fire Answ. Because the flaming fire exufflating the spirituous air of the salt within its body doth also force it to burst out the report whereof is not unlike to a cracking noise III. Who were the first inventers of Gunpowder Answ. In the first place touching the dispute whether the invention of it is to be adscribed to the Chineses or the Europeans it is very probable the Chineses were the first Authors of Gunpowder because they were found practising upon it at the same time that it was first invented in Europe Next who was the Author of it among the Europeans is uncertain but certain that he was a German whose name some would call Berthold Swarts a Monck of Friburg said to have found it out accidentally by leaving a mixture of Saltpeter and Sulphur in a Mortar covered with a stone whereinto a spark of the candle lighting by chance forced the stone up with no small report from this he was also supposed to have taken the fabrick of a Gun IV. What are the ingredients of Gunpowder Answ. Its materials are ordinarily Saltpeter Sulphur and dust of Charcoal All which being very igneous do very much intend one anothers force in blowing up a fire V. Whence arrives all that flaming fire that followeth the kindling of Gunpowder Ans. The Saltpeter which is the chiefest of the ingredients consisting of very weighty dense and waterish parts contains a great proportion of fiery minims within its body but dispersed through those weighty parts and suppressed by them these being somewhat diducted and opened through the rarefying and expanding vertue of an external actual flaming fire give occasion to the fiery minims interwoven with incrassated air to unite and through the compression of the weighty parts to be condensed whence erupting into the air doth attract other fire latent or rather is forced to it by the accurss of the ambient air and dispersed throughout the air whereby its flame is much amplified and continuated for it seemeth very improbable that so much fire should have been latent in the Gunpowder as the flame requires 2. The dilatation of the said erupting flame is also attenuated by the accurss of the air expanding the thick and course erupting flame gradually into a thinner larger flame whence it is that the flame near where the Powder was kindled appears dusky red and further off light and flashy VI. Whence is it that Gunpowder being kindled in Guns erupts with that force and violence Answ. The Powder being kindled into a flame at the Touch-hole divides or discontinuates the air more than any other body imaginable whereunto the air accurrs from all parts especially from above with the greatest velocity and force for to expell the flame which being propagated further partly by its own force partly by the intrusion of the air causeth a more violent discontinuation of air within being pent up whereunto again a greater power of air accedes from without and attenuates the flame within whereby together with the compression of the sides of the Gun and the great access of air from without the flame is violently expelled effecting a great report through its disrupting and pluffing of the air Here observe 1. How the flame is augmented within the Gun not by a vertual rarefaction as if the parts of the Gunpowder could be augmented without access of other matter from without for that would suppose either a Vacuum and a new creation of parts or a penetration and an annihilation of foregoing parts Wherefore I say it is augmented by attracting fire out of the acceding air and secondly by being attenuated and diducted into a large flame by the parts of the irrupting air 2. That it is the air entring at the touch-hole that doth expell the flame is evident 1. Because the air is shut out before by the bullet and tow 2. The touch-hole being stopt at the next instant after the Powder begins to kindle the flame is immediately suppressed and extinguisht or at least bursleth up behind Whence it doth appear that it is the air entring doth attenuate vulgarly termed rarefie and expand the flame which the advenient fire doth augment and that the said air doth expell the flame out at the muzzel 3. That the air doth make use of the weighty minims of the salt-peter in compressing and expelling the flame outwards 4. Why is a hot glass bursted by casting a drop of cold water upon it Answ. Because the fiery minims contained within its pores are condensed and violently compressed by the gravity of the water whereby they are forced to disrupt the glass Why doth a woodden Arrow being shot out of a Gun pierce deeper than an Iron one Answ. Because the woodden one gives way into it self or shrinks as it makes a hole whence being rendred lesser passeth the easier through whereas an Iron one is stubborn and is rather somewhat flatned against the body aimed at whence being rendred more obtuse and bigger at the point is hindred in penetrating Labore constantia Soli Deo triuni gloria honos in Saecula Saeculorum AMEN Errata PAge 9. line 12. dele that p. 11. l. 3. read into p. 21. l. 20. after Pellines c. must be inserted those words below beginning l. 30. I was much abused c. ending at l. 34. at breathing p. 35. l. 14. r. Fire is rough p. 44. in marg r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 fundo p. 135. l. 25. r. a man couragious p. 144. l. 13. r. Medicine p. 145. l. 28. r. procatarctick p. 148. l. 4. r. it s naturall p. 167. l. 18. r. the lumina p. 170. l. 21. for are r. is p. 191. l. 26. r. Cyzicum p. 194. l. 15. r. in oyl for that is a tast mixt out of a waterish and ayry tast The rest are
ordinary doubt moved by the Peripateticks Through what medium a sound is deferred to the hearing Their solution is that a sound is really deferred through the air as through a medium but intentionally through the water This seems to partake of no small absurdity for many of them do assert that a sound is subjectively in the air if so then a sound would be said to be its own medium which is absurd for a medium is ever intended to be a different thing from that to which it is a medium Touching their Solution it is partly false in that they affirm a sound to be intentionally only deferred through the water But why more intentionally through the water then through the air I will first propose an Instance inferring water to be capable of receiving a Sound and then enquire further into the case Frogs croaking under the water make a Sound there which we hear above the water likewise we hear the Sound of a Pole hitting against a stone under water Certainly none will deny but that the Sound of these is really propagated by obtruding the air through its bursting upwards for we see the water plainly burst or pluffe upwards a little before we hear the noyse made by a Frog or Pole ergo the action of a Sound is real as well in or through the water as through the air Possibly they may grant me that the noyse made in the water is a real action but deny the noyse made in the air and propagated through the water to be real asserting it to be intentional only I prove it to be reall A great sound made in the air doth sensibly cause a streame in the water ergo its action is really continued upon the water But again a sound being made in the air its action is much obtused because of the improportion between water being very thick and air being very thin so that a great noise in the air will make but a little noise in the water and a little noise in the air will make no sensible noise in the water But were this audible quality in the water intentional then the least sound in the air would be perceptible in the water But the one is false ergo the other is false also That a great sound in the air is audible in the water yet but very obtusely is testified by duckers or divers under the water the same is seconded by Pliny in his natural history 10. b. 70. Chap. attributing hearing and tasting unto fishes and relating that fishes have been called together by a certain sound to take their food Gellius lib. 16. noct attic c. 19. doth also recite out of Herodotus that Arion being cast over-board by the Sea-men did through the harmonical sound of his Musick draw the Dolphins to him whereof one took him upon his back and carried him safe to a Harbor Supposing this to be but a story nevertheless the allusion of the famous Inventor witnesses that fishes can hear under the water IV. Certainly few will require any proof from me that a sound is a real concussion or pluffing of the ayr since there is no great sound but it shakes air houses and the earth too whereon we stand and that sometimes to a very great distance Some years past it hapned that the Magazine of Delf a Town in the Low-countries was blown up by an accidental fire sighted upon the gunpowder the great sound or Concussion of the ayr caused through this blast was extended to many miles insomuch that it was very perfectly perceived at Amsterdam The same blast forced open one of the windows of the Chamber where an Acquaintance of mine lay then at the Hague with that violence that its rebounding against the Wall broke most of the panes At Dunkirk the sound raised by blowing up of two or three barrels of Gunpowder killed a boy although at some distance from it which accident hapned because the Concussion or pluffing of the ayr was continuated with that force that it did in that manner violently concusse or rather disrupt the animal and vital spirits of the boys body which in a manner are as I said before a continuous ayr intermixt with some contiguities of fire and earth I have formerly told you That the propagation of ayr or any quality or effect inherent and impressed in and upon the ayr reaches no further than its continuity is extending and works only upon other continuous bodies The reason is because the same action is continued only upon bodies which are of the same nature and which receive that action in the same manner Wherefore ayr and water being both continuous and united in continuity do receive the effects acted upon their continuities alike and in the same manner that is to say as far as they are both continuous and the effects are acted upon their continuities in a like manner Saving that the tenuity of the one and crassitude of the other doth hinder or facilitate augment or diminish the said action thus continuated from one to the other Further as much as one is deprived from its continuity by having its body intermixt with contiguous indivisibles so much there is detracted from the intenseness of the act continuated unto it by another continuous body Thirdly as the various incidence of light doth alter the face of colours so doth the various continuation of other various bodies variously qualified in their continuity by having other contiguous bodies immixt in them alter the property of the sound continued in them Lastly since a sound is an effect impressed upon the continuity of the ayr nothing is more averse to it or drowns it sooner than a contiguous body By help of these Theorems you may now resolve the node of several difficulties touching sounds 1. Why doth earth or fire dead a sound more than water glass or paper or why is a sound propagable through water glass or paper and is quite deaded by earth in a manner that by how much earth or fire there is contained in a body by so much a sound is deaded by that body and by how much water or ayr there is contained in an intermediate body by so much a sound is propagated further The reason is because a propagated sound is nothing else but the vibration of ayr continuously continued upon a continuous body to which continuity contiguity is contrary I will explain it to you by a conquassation of water whereby it is concussed into streams these streams so concussed are propagated into other more remote streams but if you interpose a board near the centrical streams in will hinder the propagation of the same streams because it doth divide the continuity of water Even so it is with water glass and paper those being continuous do propagate the ayrs quality in as much as they are continuous But let us dive a little further into this and question whether the continuity of the thick waterish substance of glass and of
water be the cause of the propagation of this continuity in sounds or of the ayr admitted within the subtil invisible pores of glasse or of both I answer of both but of the one primarily and perse of the other secundarily and per accidens First I prove it is of the thick waterish parts for a great noise as perhaps of a Gun will bend the glass of a window which glass through its continuity again communicates the same impression to the adjacent ayr In little sounds the waterish part of a glass is not moved but the ayry parts contained within it which propagate the same motion into the next adjacent parts for it is improbable the motion of every small sound should move so solid a body as that of glass unless it were the ayr contained within its subtil porosities Likewise in water it self as it is now the sound which is propagated through it or from it is not alwaies the motion of water it self but of the ayr contained within the water for it is also improbable that every slight sound should be sufficient to move the weighty body of water Besides were it not through the ayr but through the water a sound could not be propagated in so short a space The reason why the sound caused by a soft percussion of the ayr upon one end of a long Beam or of a Mast is so readily heard by another applying his ear to the other end of it is because that sound is propagated by the percussed ayr slyding down along the Surface of the said Beam or Mast not because the sound is propagated through the internal continuity of the Beam or Mast for that were impossible for the sound to reach to the other end through so thick a body in so short a time or by so gentle a percussion But were the sound made by the force of a great Hammer it is not improbable but the sound would pass through the body of it The noise of a Troop of Horse marching over a plain hard sandy ground may be heard at a far distance because the sound is continuately propagated by the ayr impelled along the Surface of the earth there being no contiguous body interposed to dead its sound or interrupt its continuation for otherwise any length of grass or quantity of corn standing in the fields between the hearers and the horses would interrupt and dead the sound The same reason may be applyed to resolve one why a sound made in the ayr by one upon the water is heard from a further distance than if made upon the land because the earth being contiguous doth somewhat dead and interrupt the propagation of a sound but the water being continuous and smooth doth rather further it because it doth slide and reflect the sound from her and so makes it greater and swifter than otherwise it would be if propagated through the ayr alone Water attenuated by the ayr makes a real sound to those that are under water because it concusses the auditory ayr V. This plussing up of ayr in a sound is distinguisht from the obtension of it by light 1. In that in obtensions the ayr moves to the body obtending whereas in plussing the ayr moves from the percutient 2. A plussing is a more course action whereas the other is much more subtil for they are both motions almost of the same kind differing only in tenuity and crassitude Whence I infer That there is no other difference between the Optick and Auditory spirits or ayr than that the Optick ayr is by far subtiller the other more course both having Membranes to qualifie their Objects Hence let us examine whether it be possible for a man to see or discern a voice or sound with his eyes or to hear a colour A man who hath all his senses well qualified if he make trial of the query will bring in his verdict for the impossibility of it Wherefore let us propose the doubt in a more probable state to wit whether a man whose Optick spirits be thick and his Membranes thin and somewhat denser is capable of perceiving and discerning a voice or sound through his sight 2. Whether a man whose Auditory spirits are very thin and Membrane more thick and transparent than ordinary be capable of perceiving colours and light I affirm it and will make it appear to you by experience and reason I have oft been told that the Constable of Castile his brother could perfectly discern sounds and voices by his eyes How this came to pass I shall easily demonstrate by considering first the disposition of his ocular Membranes and Optick spirits The Membranes of his eyes were somewhat thin and course not overmuch transparent standing deep in his head Whence this hapned I do farther explain to you He was deaf in such a degree that the greatest Thunder could not be perceived by him when his Eyes were shut This deafness arose from a total coalition of his Auditory passage and want of a Tympanum The matter of this Tympanum was converted by the plastick vertue in his formation to the constitution of the membranes of his Eyes whence the said membranes appeared deadish course and skinny in short the Tympanum of his eare was in a manner transferred to his eyes His Optick spirits must then of a necessity be thicker or less thin than ordinary for to be proportionable to that membrane for all parts of the body are informated with spirits proportionable to their consistency and in effect their modus consistentiae is caused from the modus consistentiae spirituum fixorum His eyes stood deep in his head and so thereby framed a grove wherein the sound was congregated In fine his eyes were the greater half eyes and the less half eares That all this is agreeable his other acts did testifie because his sight was imperfect he could not see at a distance Objects unless they were great and lustrous could not be perfectly discerned by him on the other side his hearing through his eyes was by far more imperfect a moderate sound he did not perceive a loud sound or voice he was alone sensible of Since then he was capable of perceiving sounds through his eyes no wonder if he learned his speech from thence for speech is nothing else but an ecchoing of a voice spoken by another and perceived by spirits disposed to receive its impression by expressing the same impression again by the tongue in the same manner as it was impressed Now his speech being very imperfect and unequal did testifie that the voices perceived by his eyes were imperfect and unequal That it is possible for an Animal to see colours with its eares is evident in a Mole whose ears not being very deep but its Tympanum somewhat transparent is thereby disposed to distinguish light from darkness and one colour from another that it perceives colours and light is granted by all which it cannot do by its eyes for it hath none ergo it must