Selected quad for the lemma: ground_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
ground_n	flower_n	leaf_n	stalk_n	3,783	5	11.5025	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A35975	A discourse concerning the vegetation of plants spoken by Sir Kenelme Digby at Greshan College on the 23 of January, 1660 [i.e. 1661] : at a meeting for promoting the philosophical knowledge by experiments.	Digby, Kenelm, Sir, 1603-1665.	1661 (1661)	Wing D1433; ESTC R31325	19,024	102

A DISCOURSE Concerning the VEGETATION OF PLANTS Spoken by Sir KENELME DIGBY at Gresham College on the 23. of January 1660. At a Meeting of the Society for promoting Philosophical Knowledge by Experiments LONDON Printed by J.G. for John Dakins near the Vine Tavern in Holborn 1661. OF THE VEGETATION OF PLANTS THe Subject upon which you have commanded me now to discourse unto you most honoured President and most worthy Academists is of so large an extent and of so abstruse a they may continue the same individuation and be again the same identicall body after so many strange changes and after having put on so many different habits and shapes as we daily see in the course of Nature To ayme at performing all this would be as fond a thought as to put to Sea in a pair of Oars with design to circle the whole Earth and visit both the Poles Yet since upon Mr. Surveyours motion to you upon occasion of what was just now so ingeniously delivered by our acute learned and judicious Associate Dr. Goddard about the growing of Trees you have thought good to command me to entertain you with my reflections upon this subject I will in obedience thereunto give you such hints as may stir up others by following them to make a complete and polished piece of that whereof I shall set before you only a rough draught yet it shall be composed of such naturall and assured stroaks as may perswade you that there is no insuperable difficulty nor inscrutable darkness in all this so admired progress But let us look upon it step by step and consider at every joynt or change what new shape ought in reason appear next and what new product is likely from time to time to arise out of the immediately preceding composition so tempered so qualified and so accompanyed with all its Concomitant accidents and we shall presently conclude that it would have been impossible any other thing imaginable should have resulted out of these principles and circumstances then what hath been thus born out of Natures fertile womb And be the seed never so remote from any appearing affinity with the Plant or Tree that at the last groweth out of it yet by this heedfull survey it will be evident unto us that as long as water performeth the action of wetting fire that of burning the Earth that of constipating and giving consistence to fluid bodies and the aire that of mellowing and ripening what is exposed to his embraces in a word that as long as nature proceedeth in her regular course to perform these familiar actions which we are daily witnesses of and which we find no difficulty to understand so long I say it is impossible that any other thing in the World should grow for example out of a little shrunk Akehorne then a spread vast Oake or out of a single Bean then that tall green tender Plant so furnished with stalk leaves flowers buds seeds all in their severall seasons which appeareth so differing from that dry hard grain first thrown into the Earth Let us date the beginning of our observation from thence This dry shrunk compacted substance being buryed slightly in the moist ground at a season when the approaching Sun the great Archeus and fire of nature beginning to dilate and sublime up to the Superficies of the Earth that volatile and balsamick salt which his remotenesse during the Winter had suffered to be shrunk up together and condensed and sunk deeper towards the Center must of necessity receive into its substance that saline humidity which environeth it is contiguous to it and on all hands presseth upon it The immediate effect of this humecting of the Bean or Akehorne must necessarily be that it swelleth and groweth bigger for the substance of the water getting into the very substance of the grain that lyeth soaking in it those two substances cannot choose but take up a larger room then formerly did belong long to only one of them single And from thence it will follow that the skin which wrappeth up and containeth the substance of the Bean must needs crack and tear to afford way and liberty to the dilatation of the swelled body which having thus obtained room for it self to perform such actions as in those circumstances are naturall and necessary to it whereas before it was shut up and fettered in a cold dry and hard outside it followeth presently its own swing and in that little naturall body we may read the fate which hangeth over political ones when the inferiour Members that should study nothing but obedience have gotten the power into their hands for then every one of them following their impetuous inclinations the whole is brought into confusion and that is destroyed which every one in their tumultuary way aimed to gain the Mastery of unlesse a superiour Architect as in the present case of our bleeding Nation everso missus succurere seclo do come to draw light and order out of that darknesse and confusion It will happen then to this swollen Bean now broken prison that the fiery parts of it will work to gain dominion of the watry ones and they calling the cold and dry ones to their several aides will make a violent agitation through the whole masse working and kneading the one into the other This intestine motion will cause a greater dilatation of the body so in combustion then the first humecting of it did For the naturall action of fire being to stream out from its Center on all hands in a continued floud of extreamly rarifyed atomes and they carrying along with them as continued a sequel of moist and viscous ones it will necessarily follow that they must have a larger field then originally they had to play their game in Thus far of this work belongeth to fermentation which if it grow so violent that the fiery and spirituall parts do get quite loose from the viscous ones then that which followeth is a totall Putrefaction Dissolution and Destruction of the compound But if it be kept within its due limits then the body in which it was wrought is raised to a nobler pitch and the Ethereall spirits of it are actuated and put in possession of their native vertue and the feculent insipide earthy ones are cast out from having any Society with them But you do not expect from me my honoured hearers that I should discuss the Doctrine of fermentation to the utmost scope and extent of it which as it is one of the noblest and excellentest works of nature and indeed the key to enter into the knowledge of all the actions and changes that are wrought under the Sun so it requireth a particular treatise entirely to it self and will take up a whole man to draw a complete Map of its Empire He will find that there is no disease in mans body but springeth from fermentation which when it groweth so violent and unruly that the fermented humours can no longer be contained within their oppressed