Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	bear_v	fruit_n	tree_n	1,451	5	8.5127	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A29782	Nature's cabinet unlock'd wherein is discovered the natural causes of metals, stones, precious earths, juyces, humors, and spirits, the nature of plants in general, their affections, parts, and kinds in particular : together with a description of the individual parts and species of all animate bodies ... : with a compendious anatomy of the body of man, as also the manner of his formation in the womb / by Tho. Browne ...	Browne, Thomas, Sir, 1605-1682.	1657 (1657)	Wing B5065; ESTC R16043	87,410	340

more exact in its new guest 39. Hence it is that wilde Plants if they be engrafted do remain firm because they are nourished by a more sincere Aliment so that a Domestick or Garden Plant engrafted into a wilde Plant w●… grow better and yield more pleasanter fruit 50. The Fruits of these respond in sapour colour and odour the nature of the Plant whence the Graft was taken because the juice whereby the fruit is nourished is of great moment in this matter The Commentary A NAture doth proceed always from the less perfect to the more perfect therefore it is in the first place disputed seeing that Plants by reason of forms do want of the perfection of Animals whether it be a body perfectly mixed First it is defined to be a Body perfectly mixed to difference it from Meteors in which there is an alteration of Elements made whereas in Plants and also in Metals there is a notable mutation of elementary parts therefore there is added in the definition endowed with 〈◊〉 vegetive soul. Therefore in the first place that I may take away the opinion both of Philosophers and Physitians who call that the form which governs the Plant and that the nature which is the soul for when Plants are nourished and increase they bear fruits and flowers which are the works of animate Bodies and they cannot want that soul Secondly to take away their opinion who declare that Plants are endowed with sense as Animals are concèrning which Plato Anaxagoras Empedocles and many others maintain to which many later writers assent but especially Cardan First Flight Hatred Aversion Appetite cannot be attributed to any Bodies but such as are endowed with a sensitive soul but Plants refuse and fly too much Heat as the Vine hath no propinquity with the Cabbadge and many other Plants also the Vine desires the Elm and almost all other Plants do gather what is familiar unto them and fly from what is unprofitable therefore by these actions it is not obscure that Plants are endowed with sense Secondly they are distinguished in the sex the Feminine Plant cannot consist with the Masculine each other desiring their congress neither can they come to ripeness or bear fruit without their mutual society But to the first we Answer That the Hatred Flight and Appetite of Plants is not proper but translated as Danaeus speaks indeed they contract and extend themselves by the benefit of their Fibres and so receive what is familiar and profitable by a certain natural faculty yet not with any sense onely endowed with the strength of a vegetive soul and led by the impulse of nature which Cicero calls an instinct for what things love or hate by sense those cannot hate or love as Scaliger saith Exer. 138. But for example the Cabbadge always refuses the Vine and hath a continual enmity against it and hence doth manifestly evade it But this Flight and Appetite of Plants is altogether without sense yet some attribute this to the Sex of the Plants which is to be understood metaphorically as a certain similitude taken from strength and weakness for the Masculine is more stronger then the Feminine the Feminine more weaker then the Masculine therefore we are to understand that masculine Plants are always strong and robust the feminine weak and fecundine But it is said in the Definition which do grow out of the earth for this is as it were the belly of Plants as Anaxagoras saith and out of this the Fibres of the roots whatsoever is profitable to them and agreable to their nature they attract and convert into their substance Further it is said to grow live nourish and increase in which vital actions the Plant differs from other Inanimate things which as they are destitute of a soul so they want these actions Hence it is that a Plant is said to be dissolved not that it hath onely an animate Body but organical also and so of it self alone and not of the earth as the Soicks would have it to have the beginning of its actions but although these strengths and actions are common to Animals yet notwithstanding they are insited in Plants the soul is used to the life and preservation of the Plants instrumentally with heat well tempered which Plants do draw out of the earth where they are placed by the roots and that heat which cleaves to the humid tressel and subject the defect whereof as it is death to Animals so it is dryness and corruption to Plants B The plenty of the inward humour causes the longevity of Plants for thereby the innate heat which is the instrument of form is thereby made First therefore when plenty of heat is discerned it suggests the aliment not easily to be dissipated but that the Plant will live long and yield much oleous and resinous juice Secondly when they are dense and compact they faithfully preserve their vital heat and moisture neither can they suffer external injuries and for this cause trees are more diuturnal then Fruits and Fruits then Herbs Thirdly the Longitude and crassitude of roots is of great moment by reason of their hardness for lengthening of life First because by how much the roots are deeper by so much they stick more firm and the more do resist the external injury of winde and heat Secondly the roots are as it were the beginning of Plants in which the hot moisture doth chiefly flourish and the subterranean heat and humour daily cherished for it is consonant to reason where there is much humidity and calidity there the roots must needs be ample and profound and therefore a small and simple root is defective of calidity and humidity and thereupon cannot grow long Fourthly fecundity also is the cause of shortning its life because of the too little dissipation of Juice whereby the inward humour is nourished which juice should go into the seed and fruit C Heat hurts Plants less then cold unless arridity accede which is called squalor and those are easily hurt by cold whose roots are not deep for there the sun doth the sooner pierce unto them and the proximate parts of the roots are affected strongly by the beams of the sun because the earth is wanting to nourish them D But why certain Plants do arise quickly after sowing the seed and others a long time after The first and chiefest cause is the force of form The second is the strength and imbecility of the insited heat The third is the rarity and density the softness and hardness of the seeds for in hard and dense Bodies the humour is elicited not so readily by the force of heat out of the earth whereby the seed doth swell and for this cause it is that the seed of Pyony doth bud so long after Sation and Mandrake longer which is more hard and dense which certain space of days of budding or sprouting happens according to the variety of the suns influence and heavens concurrence and hence it is that if dung be commixed

with the earth where seed is to be sowen the seed will sooner erupt not onely excited thereunto by the innate heat of the seed as the extream calidity of the earth so the seeds of Palmes if infused and macerated in water before its sation it sooner sprouts E Theophrastus saith that experience teaches that certain Plants do grow without seed and that some have been seen to grow in the earth where none was sowen or planted before he instances in Laserpitium which sometimes hath been seen in Affrica and never found before in the same place Some of the Philosophers do inquire out the seminal cause of these Plants Anaxagoras judges the air to convey the seed from some other place and there to fix according to the course of nature others judge it to happen by the inundation and conflux of waters whereby seeds are conveyed from some places to other parts of the earth more remote And although these things are not spoken altogether foolishly as without reason yet the truth thereof is to be questioned but it is certain that many Plants however have been found to grow of their own accord without any seed As Polypody of the Oak as we see certain little Animals to have their original by accidents as lice worms and other insects that are generated by accidents F It is a question deserves solution whence it is that the insected parts of Plants do live longer then if they had remained whole nay and are thereby propogated whereas it is not so with Animals for if their parts be cut they perish For we see that boughs plucked from their stock and plants plucked up by the roots to grow and are thereby propagated but with Animals after the division of a foot ear arm leg or ther parts forthwith they die I answer that Plants do longer survive after their section if again planted or engrafted because they have the force of the soul insited and that diffused through all and every part And besides they have scattered abroad their native heat the individual companion of the soul and their humidity which is lent and crass and therefore less dissipable through all the parts by which two principles they live and undergo all the functions of nature and hence it is that part of a Plant sejoyned from its stock is said to live in the earth the matrix as it were of Plants by the benefit of the soul which is correllative in the whole and every part and to beget a root or take rooting which is a new principle from the humidity resident and attracted out of the earth or sprout and grow out of another trunk planted therein by insition and so coalesce after the same manner even now declared For as long as Plants preserve that humidity of theirs stedfast and dense so long are they capable of life and soul but such as are perfect Animals and are consequently of a stronger and better nature do not onely stand in need of an insited but an influent faculty which is drawn from the heart and hence it is that their humidity is not so stedfast viz. substantial but more thin and tenderer and therefore doth the sooner expire Hence it is that if a hand be separared from the body all the life therein is extinguished because it is destitute of an influent faculty from the heart for that thing cannot have a soul unless it have a continued derivation from the heart which if it once be destitute of it loses to be an animated being CHAP. 5. Of certain affections of Plants 1. HItherto we have Treated of the rise of Plants both Natural and Artificial Now we shall proceed to their Affections or Corruptions wherewith they are infested their Affections may proceed either from their native soyl or rather the ground where planted from the variety of their germination fecundity and propriety of substance or from their qualities 2. The soyl or rather matter of the rise of Plants is either Terrestrial or Aquatical 3. Terrestrial viz. their native place in the earth and that either in gardens or fields sative or wilde 4. The Sative are Domestick Plants such as grow in Gardens 5. The Wilde are such as grow in the Woods Mountains Valleys and the like 6. Aquatical such as grow in waters and that either in the ocean or lesser waters as in Fountains Rivers Ponds c. Arist. 7. Again some Plants are delighted in a hot place some in a cold place some in the open field some in the shade some upon rocks and some upon sandy-ground 8. But why A Plants should delight to grow in such variety of soyls is not easily determined yet notwithstanding the place where the thing is sited is the conservation of that thing and indeed of all things sublunar therefore divers Plants are of divers natures and accordingly do attract convenient Aliment out of that soyl for the preservation of life and do therefore rejoyce as it were in a fit and convenient soyl 9. Furthermore notice must be taken in the germination of Plants the time when they germinate their Celerity and Tardity 10. The time of germination is the Spring when there is plenty of humour abounding which was gathered in the winter-season and then their innate heat is excited by the extremity of external heat insomuch that the cutis of Plants and the meatus of the universal Body begins to be opened which causes the juice to be educed abroad and a budding or germination to be made 11. Others put forth their summer-fruit sooner or later according to their naure which happens according to the greater or lesser force of the innate heat and humour and also the rarity or density of the Plants body 12. Sometimes notwithstanding tilled or pruned Plants do bud later then the untilled First by reason of the less revocation of the inward heat to the outward parts and by reason of the wounds made by pruning Secondly either from the debilitation or weakness of the same heat or the denudation of the root or from the incrassitude of the humour Thirdly from the density and thickness of the Plant induced or brought into the root by the force of nocturnal frigidity and by the root into the whole Plant. 17. And they do not generate forthwith in their first age neither do Animals whilst young and tender bear young because all their aliment at that time is diverted into their increment Secondly their force is more weak whereby it cannot concoct it nor condensate it into fruit 14 Neither do all Plants generate for so some are fruitful others not fruitful 15. The cause of fruitfulness is referred by some onely to heat but when there is heat without matter that is copious aliment it can effect or frame nothing Hot and succulent Plants are onely fruitful 16. Of fruitful or fecundine Plants some do bear fruit once in all their life others oftner 17. Those that bear fruit oftner are such as fructicate annally once a year some twice and some three times a year the proximate cause of

which is no other then the proximate form of every species 18. Of fecundine Plants some are fertile continently and that by the reason of the abundance of their heat and fatness of their humour as the Fig-tree which fructicates sometimes but every year the same is observed in pear-Pear-trees and Apple-trees 19. These Trees are very profuse for they require so much aliment for the generation of fruit that if they receive not annually so much by reason of the season of the year they become barren for that year 20. The property of the substance of Plants may be discerned by their various affections whereby they exercise and act 21. Plants exercise their strength in things that are either Animate or Inanimate 22. Inanimate things as upon other Plants or Animals 23. Upon Plants they either exercise a sympathy or antipathy friendship or enmity so that the Olive-tree will be averse to the Oak the Cabadge to the Vine the Reed to the Fearn but on the contrary there is a friendship sympathy between Rue and the Fig-tree that each other profits much by their vicinity 24. The inquisition of these things is so obscure insomuch that some have referred their original to an occult cause and others have gone about to demonstrate it by reason 25. But however this is most likely the true meaning why they prosecute such a sympathy and antipathy by reason of the substraction of aliment and corruption for this cause it is that where the Oak is the Olive will not live because the aliment is corrupted by the dryness of the Oak and therefore is made more arrid then the nature of Olive is So the Cabbage and the Vine cannot grow together First because the roots of the Vine do draw abundance of aliment from all the parts of the ground where it is planted Secondly because the bushiness of the Vine obstructs the reflection of the sun upon the Cabbage 26. So in like manner do they exercise sympathy and friendship the Rue seems to have nutriment with the Fig-tree which is the cause of this loving correspondence for if the nature of the Fig-tree be hot it must needs attract hot nutriment which corresponds with the nature of Rue 27. Plants also have a sympathy and antipathy to Animals and that either to man alone or other Animals 28. Some Plants are friendly to mankinde others are adverse to humane nature and others do partake of a certain medium between both 29. Those that are friendly do repair and defend the universal Body or determinated parts 30. Those which are said to preserve the life of the universal Body are such as have a strong faculty in nourishing whose is the consent of principles if so be all things be nourished with its like 31. But whether this consent happens from the form or rather matter is an intricate doubt Indeed the hability of the matter is altogether necessary but the consent of the form ought to accede 32. And these Plants do nourish either in the whole or in part 33. Whole Plants that do nourish are such as these pot-herbs Lettice Cabbage Water-cresses Brooklime 34. Part of Plants as the roots of Rape Parsnip Radish fruits as of Mellons Cucumbers seeeds as of Beans and Pease corn as of Barley Wheat Rye c. 35. What things do defend a certain part of the body are various as Pyony the head Saffron the heart Mint the stomack Egrimony the liver Capers the spleen Hermodactyls the arteries the cause of which is a certain similitude and consent of that Plant with the form of that part to which ordained 36. Some Plants are enemies pernicious and hurtful and that either to the whole body or part to the whole they prove fatal by everting the continuity of union and depraving of life or stupefie or benum part of the body as Henbane to the head Pepper of the Mount to the liver Ervus to the reins and bladder Aloes to the hemorrhoids the cause of which antipathy or corruption is the controversie of the form 37. One and the same Plant is sometimes salutary to one man but noxious and death to another by reason of the peculiar constitution of the individuum 38. Some Plants there are partly friends and partly enemies to our bodies partaking of a middle nature between sympathy and antipathy 39. They are enemies indeed which are infested with a bad sapour or odour they are friends that are correspondent to our constitution which do bring out unprofitable juices out of our Bodies as Coloquintida and oth●…r purging Plants 40. But as far as Medicaments act by purgation so far they operate upon nature by a ●…ertain force which may be accounted under the name of being an enemy to nature and those which draw corruption with humours are enemies though they be judged to draw them by a certain similitude and congruity 41. The strength of Plants have also a certain friendship and enmity with other Animals for Fennel is a friend to the Serpent but Rue an enemy the Ash to the Scorpion but Wolfs-bane infests him white Hellebore is a friend to him for if he be laid thereto he revives so Basil in which he hath been seen to ingender so the herbs Oenothara Crateva Lysimachus hung about the necks of mad Animals or untamed Bulls they will cause them as Antiquity hath observed to turn round all which do express necessarily a certain tacite consent of forms 42. Plants also do produce various effects in inanimite things for the ancients have left upon record that by the force and touch of Missletoe and the herb Aethiopis all Locks and Bolts do fly open The Spina of Theophrastus doth congeal water Radix Hybisci and the juice of Purslain and Mercury doth abate the force of fire this hath often been experimented in our time all which in reason we ought to believe to be acted no other ways then by the power of proper forms 43. Lastly for the nourishment and contemperation of the elementary qualities in Plants four degrees are constituted in Plants to wit that some be hot or cold moist or dry in the first or second third or fourth degree 44. And these degrees respectively taken are either remiss or intense those that are remiss are such as are placed in the first degree the rest are intense so that the fourth be the chief and exceed altogether mediocrity The Commentary A VVHy Plants are delighted to grow in various places is a thing not easily unfolded yet it is a thing worth inquiring Therefore according to the opinion of the Philosophers the place is the conservator of all things that as the nature of Plants is various so they have need of divers places to preserve life therefore that place alone or soyl is proper and profitable to the life of Plants which doth suggest convenient aliment unto them and in which the roots of the Plant may have foundation commodious for its nature

nourished and it is called exerementitious blood to difference it from the seminal excrement and it is an excrement of the second concoction which is made in the liver and veins and therefore it is that it hath a red colour furthermore that matter which is contained in the veins and expurged by the veins of the womb is this superfluous blood and excrement of the second coction for whereas the Bodies of women are more colder then mens they cannot make perfect their last aliment nor convert it into the substance of the body to be nourished whereupon that which is above and cannot be converted by little and little is thence conveyed to the veins of the womb where it gathers together into one place and what of it cannot be sustained by nature is expelled It s use is necessary for as it helps conception so it nourishes the yong But here a question will arise how the yong whilst it is conceived and framed in 〈◊〉 ●…omb is gotten nourished by this same blood when it is endowed with a bad quality and puts forth many ill affections I answer This blood is not always so bad as is imagined for those women whose bodies are temperate their blood also must needs be temperate and when the body is vitious the blood also must needs be infected But again this pravity in women is purged away every moneth and in them it is otherwise then in those who keep their tearms beyond their accustomed time the former hath no noxious quality in it as to hurt what is generated of it which need not seem strange but if the same blood be not evacuated at its accustomed time but retained it will stir up and cause many bad affections as the suffocation of the matrix 〈◊〉 and the like But now if it be considered in a woman that hath milk in her brests it is otherwise for then blood is conflated of a treble substance for then the alimentary or pure portion of it goes to the nourishment of the yong and part somewhat impurer goes to the brests and converts to milk and the worst of all is contained as excrements in the tunicles where the yong is enrolled which is evacuated at the womans delivery E After the seed of both Sexes together with the menstruous blood is received into the womb it closes up and the seed therein contained is cherished by its heat and begins to act the spiritual part of the seed passes to the bottom and begins the formation and of the crass part of the seed the spermatick parts are engendred and of the menstruous the sanguineous parts F The Notes of conception are these The close shutting up of the womb A kinde of trembling and tickling over the whole body And after that an exceeding refrigeration Loss of stomach Nauseating of victuals Vomitings c. G Generation is made by the mutation of the power into the act and an artificial composition of many existents in the act the Soul is the act of an organical body but the seed is not the organ therefore not the animate then the power above will be the animate for as the Sun not hot doth calefie the Whetstone not sharp yet doth sharpen so also the seed may animate that is the yong is animated by the seed although there be no soul or life in it I It is a great and difficult dispute among Physitians and Philosophers in what order the parts of the yong are framed some think the liver first to be generated others the heart which they say is the first that lives and the last that dies In this Controversie we are to observe that neither the Liver nor the Heart nor any other principal member nor umbilical vessels are generated first as divers have judged ●…everal manner of ways but that all are inchoated in one and the same moment and that for this subsequent reason The vital spirit which is the efficient cause of the generation and the internal natural agent not the external voluntary hath the whole formatrix faculty in every part where it is joyned to the matter fitly disposited it must necessarily act secundum potentias and therefore all the parts of the body are produced by it at once this experience confirms by those who have miscarried in ten twenty or thirty days after conception when the whole substance hath not exceeded the bigness a grain of Barley a Bee or the figure of a Bean yet all its bowels are formed as some late Anatomists have observed CHAP. 16. De Zoophytis or of things that are partly Animals and partly Plants 1. HItherto we have illustrated the first Species of Nature Aisthetices to wit an animal the other which remains to be explained is part Plant and part Animal 2. And these Zoophyta's are corporeal Natures endowed onely with certain senses contracting and dilating themselves by motion 3. Whence Hermolaus Barbarus calls them Plantanimalia Budaeus tearms them Plantanimes because they have a middle and as it were a third Nature between Plants and Animals 4. Whereas they have a certain sense with Animals Hence they dilate themselves pleasantly to such things as they attract and affect but contract themselves if pricked or offended 5. But in the effigies of the Body they come nearest to the Nature of Plants 6. Their formes differ according to their greater or lesser vertue of feeling all of them adhere to Rocks Sand or Mud of which sort are these Holothuria Stella marina Pulmo marinus U●…tica spongiae 7. To these may be added that Tree which grows in the Province of Pudifetanea to which if a man draws nigh it will gather in its boughes as though it were ashamed and when he is gone spread them abroad for which cause the inhabitants thereabouts have nominated it the Chaste tree Scaliger Exer. 181. Sect. 28. FINIS An Advertisement to the Reader THere is now in the Press that excellent Piece intituled Natural Magick in twenty Books by John Baptist Porta a Neopolitane Enlarged by the Author himself and cleared from divers errors wherewith the former Editions were tainted In which all the riches and delights of the natural Sciences are set forth Carefully Translated from the Latine and rendred into English by a worthy hand The Books of Natural Magick are these 1 OF the causes of wonderful things 2 Of the Generation of divers Animals 3 Of the production of new Plants 4 Of increasing Houshold-stuff 5 Of Changing Metals 6 Of Counterfeiting precious Stones 7 Of the wonders of the Load-stone 8 Of strange Cures 9 Of Beautifying of women 10 Of extracting Essences 11 Of Perfuming 12 Of Artificial Fires 13 Of the most rare Tempering of Steel 14 Of Cookery 15 Of Hunting 16 Of invisible Writing 17 Of strange Glasses 18 Of Staticks Experiments 19 Of Pneumatick Experiments 20. Chaos