Selected quad for the lemma: nature_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
nature_n	cold_a	hot_a	moist_a	5,424	5	10.2024	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A28965	Essays of the strange subtilty great efficacy determinate nature of effluviums. To which are annext New experiments to make fire and flame ponderable. : Together with A discovery of the perviousness of glass. : Also An essay, about the origine and virtue of gems. / By the Honourable Robert Boyle ... ; To which is added The prodromus to a dissertation concerning solids naturally contained within solids giving an account of the Earth, and its productions. By Nicholas Steno. ; Englished by H.O.; Essays of the strange subtilty, determinate nature, great efficacy of effluviums	Boyle, Robert, 1627-1691.	1673 (1673)	Wing B3952; ESTC R170743	92,523	306

name Fumes and very often simply Exhalations and the Aqueous part others that are not as many of his Disciples mistake him to have taught Cold and Moist but Hot and Moist which they usually call Vapours to discriminate them from the Fumes or Exhalations though otherwise in common acceptation those Appellations are very frequently confounded But though the Aristotelians have thus perfunctorily handled this Subject it would not become Corpuscularian Philosophers who attribute so much as they do to the Insensible Particles of Matter to acquiesce in so slight and jejune an account of the Emanations of Bodies And since we have already shewn that besides the greater and more simple Masses of Terrestrial and Aqueous matter newly mention'd there are very many mixt Bodies that emit Effluviums which make as it were little Atmospheres about divers of them it will be congruous to our Doctrine and Design to add in this place That besides the slight and obvious differences taken notice of by Aristotle the Steams of Bodies may be almost as various as the Bodies themselves that emit them and that therefore we ought not to look upon them barely under the general and confused notion of Smoak or Vapours but may probably conceive them to have their distinct and determinate Natures oftentimes though not always suitable to that of the Bodies from whence they proceed And indeed the newly mentioned Division of the Schools gives us so slight an account of the Emanations of Bodies that methinks it looks like such another as if one should divide Animals into those that are Horned and those that have Two Feet For besides that the Distinction is taken from a Difference that is not the considerablest there are divers Animals as many four-footed Beasts and Fishes that are not comprised in it and each member of the Division comprehends I know not how many distinct sorts of Animals whose differences from one another are many times more considerable than those that constitute the two supreme Genus's the one having Bulls and Goats and Rhinoceros's and Deer and Elks and certain Sea-Monsters whose Horns I have seen and the other Genus comprising also a greater Variety namely a great part of Four-footed Beasts and besides Men all the Birds for ought we know whether of Land or Water And as it would give us but a very slender Information of the Nature of an Elk or an Unicorn to know that 't is an Horned Beast or of the Nature of a Man an Eagle or a Nightingale to be told that 't is an Horn-less Beast so it will but very little instruct a man in the Nature of the Steams of Quicksilver or of Opium to be told that they are Vapours Hot or rather Cold and Moist or of the Steams of Amber or Cantharides or Cinnamon or Tobacco to be told that they are Hot and Dry. For besides that there may be Effluviums which even by their Elementary Qualities are not of either of these two supreme Genus's for they may be Cold and Dry or Cold and Moist these Qualities are often far from being the Noblest and consequently those that deserve to be most consider'd in the Effluviums of this or that Body as we shall by and by have occasion to manifest CHAP. II. ANd here it may not be improper to mention an Experiment that I remember I divers years since employed to illustrate the Subject of our present Discourse I consider'd then that Fluid Bodies may be of very unequal density and gravity as is evident in Quicksilver Water and pure Spirit of Wine which notwithstanding their great difference in specifick gravity may yet agree in the conditions requisite to Fluid Bodies Therefore presuming that by what I could make appear visible in one what happens analogically in the other may be ocularly illustrated I took some Ounces of Roch-allom and as much of fine Salt-peter I took some Ounces of each because if the quantity of the ingredients be too small the concoagulated grains will be so too and the success will not be so conspicuous These being dissolved together in fair Water the filtrated solution was set to evaporate in an open-mouthed Glass and being then left to shoot in a cool place there were fastned to the sides and other parts of the Glass several small Crystals some Octoedrical which is the figure proper to Roch-allom and others of the Prismatical shape of pure Salt-peter besides some other Saline concretions whose being distinctly of neither of these two shapes argued them to be concoagulations of both the Salts And this we did by using such a degree of Celerity in Evaporating the liquor as was proper for such an effect For by another degree which is to be employ'd when one would recover the Salts more distinctly and manifestly the matter may as I found by tryal be so ordered that the aluminous Salt may for the most part be first coagulated by it self and then from the remaining liquor curiously shap'd Crystals of Nitre may be copiously obtained Tryals like this we also made with other Salts and particularly with Sea-Salt and with Allom and Vitriol the Phaenomena of which you may meet with in their due places For the recited Experiment may I hope alone serve to assist the imagination to conceive how the Particles of Bodies may swim to and fro in a Fluid which the Air is and though they be little enough to be invisible may many of them retain their distinct and determinate natures and their aptness to cohere upon occasion and others may by their various occursions and coalitions unite into lesser Corpuscles or greater Bodies differing from the more simple Particles that composed them and yet not of indeterminate though compounded Figures CHAP. III. THese things being premis'd we may now proceed to the particular Instances of the Determinate Nature of Effluviums and these we may not inconveniently reduce to the three following Heads to each of which we shall assign a distinct Chapter the first of these I shall briefly treat of in this third Chapter and treat somewhat more largely of the others in the two following In the first place then That the Effluviums of many Bodies retain a determinate Nature oftentimes in an invisible smallness and oftener in such a size as makes them little enough to fly or swim in the Air may appear by this that these Effluvia being by Condensation or otherwise reunited they appear to be of the same nature with the Body that emitted them Thus in moist weather the Vapours of Water that wander invisibly through the Air meeting with Marble-Walls or Pavements or other Bodies by their Coldness and other Qualifications fit to condense and retain them appear again in the form of Drops of Water and the same Vapours return to the visible form of Water when they fall out of the Air in Dews or Rains Quicksilver it self if it be made to ascend in distillation with a convenient degree of Fire will almost all be found again in the

the Air do by its acid or other Particles disarm if I may so speak the Pestilential ones I have not now time to inquire No more than whether in Ireland and some few other Countries that breed or brook no poysonous Animals that hostility may proceed at least in great part from the peculiar Nature of the Soyl which both from its superficial and deeper parts constantly supplies the Air with Corpuscles destructive to venemous Animals And some other Particulars that may be pertinently enough consider'd here you may find treated on in other Papers And therefore at present I shall only intimate in a word that having purposely made a visible and lasting Stain on a solid Body barely by cold Effluvia I did by the invisible and cold Steams of another Body make in two or three Minutes a visible change in the colour of that Stain And as for the other part of the Conjecture viz. That Meteors may sometimes be produc'd by the Occursions of Subterraneal Effluvia some of them of one determinate Nature and some of another I think I could to countenance it give you divers Instances of the plentiful Impregnation of the Air at some times and in some places with Steams of very differing Natures and such as are not so likely to be attracted by the Heat of the Sun as to be sent up from the Subterraneal Regions and sometimes from Minerals themselves But for Instances of this kind I shall for brevities sake refer you to another Paper where I have purposely treated of this Subject and particularly shewn That though usually the Effluxions that come from under ground are ill-scented yet they are not alwayes so and also that Sulphureous Exhalations even from cold and for the most part Aqueous Liquors may retain their determinate nature in the Air and act accordingly upon solid Bodies themselves to whose Constitution those Effluvia chance to be proportionate But one memorable Story not mention'd 〈…〉 that Discourse is too much to our present purpose to be here omitted especially having met with it in so approved an Author as the experienc'd Agricola who having mention'd out of antient Historians the Raining of White and Red liquors which they took erroneously I doubt not for Milk and Blood subjoyns Ut autem majorèm fidem habe amus Annalium monumentis facit res illa decantata quae Patrum memoriâ in another place he specifies the Year of our Lord in Suevia accidit Aer enim ille stillavit guttas quae lineas vestes crucibus rubris quasi sanguineis imbuebant Which I the rather mention because it does not only prove what I alledge it for but may keep what is lately and very credibly reported to have happen'd in divers places of the Kingdom of Naples soon after the Fiery Eruption of Vesuvius from being judg'd a Phaenomenon either altogether fabulous as doubtless many have thought it or a Prodigie without all example as is presum'd even by those that think it not miraculous And to this I add that 't will be the less improbable that the more agile Corpuscles of Subterraneal Salts Sulphurs and Bitumens may be rais'd into the Air and keep distinct natures there if so fixt a Body as common Earth it self can be brought to swim in the Air. And yet of this the worthy Writer newly quoted gives us besides what Annals relate this Testimony upon his own knowledge Certè hîc Kempnicii undecimum abhinc annum mense Septembri effluxerunt imbres sic cum terra lutea commisti ut eâ passim plateas scilicet stratas viderem conspersas And to shew you that in some cases the Particles even of Vegetable Bodies may not so soon perish in the Air as they vanish there but may retain distinct natures at a greater distance than one would think from the Bodies that copiously emit them I shall add that having desir'd an ingenious Gentleman that went on a considerable Employment to the East-Indies to make some Observations for me in his Voyage he sent me among other things this Remarque That having sayl'd along the Coast of Ceylon famous for Cinnamon-trees and well-scented Gums though they Coasted it almost a whole day the Wind that then chanc'd to blow from the shoar brought them a manifestly odoriferous Air from the Island though they kept off many miles perhaps twenty or twenty-five from the shoar Nor should this be thought incredible because the diffusion seems so disproportionate to that of other Bodies dissolved by Fluids as for instance though Salt be an active Body and resoluble into abundance of minute Particles yet one part of Salt will scarce be tastable in an hundred parts of Water For sensibly to affect so gross an Organ as that of our Tast there is usually required in sapid Particles a bigness far exceeding that which is necessary to the making Bodies fit Objects for the sense of Smelling and which is here mainly to be considered there is a great difference between the power a Body has to impregnate so thin and fine a Fluid as Air whose parts are so rare and lax and that which it has to impregnate Liquors such as Water or Wine whose parts are so constipated as to make it not only visible and tangible but ponderous On which occasion I remember that having had a Curiosity to try how far a sapid Body could be diluted without ceasing to be so I found by Tryal that one drop of good Chymical and as Artists call it Essential Oyl of Cinnamon being duly mix'd by the help of Sugar with Wine retain'd the determinate tast of Cinnamon though it were diffus'd into near a quart of Wine So that making a moderate estimate I concluded that upon the common supposition according to which a drop is reckon'd for a Grain one part of Oyl had given the specifick Tast of the Spice it was drawn from to near fourteen thousand parts of Wine By comparing which Experiment with what I noted about the proportion of Salt requisite to make Water tast of it you will easily perceive that there may be a very great difference in point of diffusiveness between the little Particles that make Bodies sapid Which may serve to confirm both some part of the first Chapter of the foregoing Essay of the Subtilty of Effluvia and what I was lately saying to shew it possible that Antimonial Glass might impart store of Steams to the Emetick Wine without appearing upon common Scales to have lost of its weight since we see that one Drop of so light a Body as Oyl may communicate not insensible Effluvia but tastable Corpuscles to near a Quart of Liquor But this is not all for which I mention our Experiment for I must now add that besides the almost innumerable Sapid parts of a spicy Drop communicated to the Wine it thence diffused a vast number of odorous Particles into the Air which both I and others perceived to be imbued with the distinct scent of Cinnamon and