Selected quad for the lemma: end_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
end_n	east_n	point_n	west_n	1,970	5	9.4719	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A28944	Certain physiological essays and other tracts written at distant times, and on several occasions by the honourable Robert Boyle ; wherein some of the tracts are enlarged by experiments and the work is increased by the addition of a discourse about the absolute rest in bodies.	Boyle, Robert, 1627-1691.	1669 (1669)	Wing B3930; ESTC R17579	210,565	356

me a Difficulty which though un-mention'd at our meeting may afford an Objection perhaps more difficult than any of not to say all the foregoing namely That 't is scarce imaginable how such solid and hard Bodies should have their internal parts wrought upon by such slight Agents as the air and perhaps some yet minuter matter that is dispersed in it and how it is possible that where there is an actual Motion it should be so slow that a Corpuscle of Iron for instance seated in the internal Part of a Magnetick Needle should spend so long time as our conjecture requires in travelling so little a space as from thence to the next Superficies of the Needle But to this double Objection though some instances which you will meet with in the following part of this Paper may be properly applyed to solve it yet not to make your curiosity wait I will here speak a word or two to each of the members of the Objection SECT IV. And to the first I say That these Intestine Motions of the Corpuscles of hard Bodies need not be solely nor perhaps principally ascribed to those obvious external Agents to which we are wont to refer them since these may but excite or assist the more principal or internal Causes of the Motions we speak of as you may gather from what was but lately mention'd of the connate and unlooseable mobility of the Atoms according to Epicurus and the permeation of the most Solid Bodies by the Cartesian Materia Subtilis and we may see by the sudden effects of the Load-stone in endowing Steel wi●h Magnetick Qualities and depriving it of them again both which suppose the intervention of a change of Texture and this a production of Local Motion in the Metal that very minute and insensible Corpuscles of matter are not uncapable of effecting durable changes in the solidest Bodies And as for the other member of the Objection I confess it is not easie for us who are wont perhaps too much to follow our Eyes for Guides in judging of things corporeal and to deny existence to most things to most things whereto Nature has deny'd a visible bulk 't is not easie I say for us to imagine so great a slowness as 't is very possible for Nature to make use of in her Operations though our not being able to discern the motion of a shadow of a Dial-plate or that of the Index upon a Clock or Watch ought to make us sensible of the incompetency of our eyes to discern some motions of natural Bodies which reason tells us ought to be incomparably slower than these But not now to dispute about the existence and Attributes of infinite slowness or at least a slowness in the next possible degree to infinite I consider that it has not that I know of been demonstrated nor attempted to be so that the motion of the Corpuscle for example of the Needle above mention'd must be made in a direct line from the place where 't was first supposed to be to the Superficies of the Needle for it seems more rational and to agree better with the Phaenomena to suppose that the way of this Corpuscle in the Body 't would quit is extreamly crooked and intricate almost like that of a Squib in the air or on the ground for it being on the one hand urg'd on by the Causes whatever they be that make it strive to fly away and on the other hand hindred by the Corpuscles whereto 't is connected and by the occursions of other Corpuscles whose motions may be opposite to or disagreeing with those of our design'd Corpuscle it may probably before it can extricate it self be reduc'd to encounter and wrestle as it were with many other Corpuscles and be by them sometimes thrust or impell'd to the right hand and to the left and sometimes also repell'd inwards even after it is come to the superficial part of the Needle whence it may not presently have the liberty to fly away but may be drawn back by some other Corpuscle wherewith it is yet connected and which happening to be it self thrust inward may draw after it and so entangle again our almost disbanded Corpuscle besides that the gravity of the component Particles of a Body is oftentimes such that 't is easier for the Agent that puts them in motion to continue them in that slow motion among themselves than drive them up into so light a medium as the air as experience shews in those Bodies that are called Fixt as Gold and Glass though in actual fusion But I forget that I promis'd you to decline Speculations and therefore I shall only name to you a couple of Instances which will serve to confirm both what I was lately saying and what I am now in proving SECT V. The first of these I shall take from what is usually granted as matter of Fact namely that if a Spring though made of so hard a Body as Steel be forcibly bent and kept but a moderate while in that posture as soon as the force that kept it bent is removed it will again return to its former Figure but if it be kept too long in that forc't position it will by degrees lose that which they call the motion of Restitution and retain its new crooked Figure though the force that bent ●t be removed which shews both the power of some of the more familiar Agents in Nature and which is that the shewing whereof I here chiefly aim at that where there is a continued endeavour of the parts of a Body to put themselves into another state yet the motion or rather the progress may be much more slow than men seem as yet to have taken notice of since 't was a great while before ●he Texture of the Corpuscles of the Steel were so alter'd as to make them lose their former springiness But I will second this with a more illustrious Experiment which will at once confirm what I have just now said and shew that the Air or the invisible Corpuscles harbour'd in it may have no inconsiderable power to act upon and effect changes in the solidest Bodies To this purpose I shall only observe to you that though if a Bar of Iron having one of its ends held perpendicularly and at a fit distance to the Lilly or north-North-Point of the Mariners Compass I mean that which points towards the North it will as I elsewhere mention drive it away towards the East or West and if this same lower end of the Bar of Iron be put into a contrary posture it will presently lose its temporary magnetism as I elsewhere declare Yet if this Bar be very long kept upright in a Window or other convenient place then as some late Magnetical Writers will tell you it will have acquired a constant and durable magnetick power Which is a Phaenomenon that makes exceedingly for our present pu●pose since it hence appears both that the Air together with the magnetical Effluvia of the