Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
truth_n	according_a	fable_n	great_a	44	3	2.0729	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A44319	Lampas, or, Descriptions of some mechanical improvements of lamps & waterpoises together with some other physical and mechanical discoveries / made by Robert Hooke ...	Hooke, Robert, 1635-1703.	1677 (1677)	Wing H2616; ESTC R4456	38,929	57

flatted on each side the little ring or embossed girdle encompassing them others more swelling Also those little rings or bands encompassing the boxes are different in some of the kinds broader and flatter in others rounder and standing up higher yet all agreeing in the principal parts of their form I purpose to draw the figures of them all as they appear by the Microscope together with their Seeds and to add descriptions of all circumstances considerable and joyn them to the rest of my draughts of that kind Some particulars most considerable I now give you in the folfollowing account 1. The little boxes containing the Seeds are in most of these Plants not half and in some not above one third or one quarter as big as a very small grain of common white sand appearing like little bladders infolded with rings or bands shaped like certain little worms I have met with which may be referred to the Teredo's and Eruca's 2. As near as I could compute some of these bladders contained about 100 Seeds which were so exceeding small as to be wholly invisible to the naked eye and indiscoverable without a Microscope 3. The Leaves of both the Ferns especially the common Female Fern which is more abundantly stored with Seed than any of the rest and the other I now send you being kept close without bruising and soon after gathering exposed to the Sun or dry Air the bands of as many of them as are ripe will contract themselves and break and fling their Seeds all about after the same manner as some other small Plants such as the Persicaria Siliquata and some of the Cardaminas are observed to do This I have observed with a single convex glass as well as with the Microscope but with the latter only I could discover the falling of the Seed And a pretty quantity of the Seed being rubbed or brushed off from the Leaves upon a fine piece of Paper or Parchment and sweeped together into a heap many of those boxes breaking together and justling one another would make the heap seem as it were full of Mites or living Creatures even to the bare eye and if the place be free from noise and the Ear be close applied the crackling of them upon breaking may easily enough be heard and upon running over the Paper with a Microscope the Seeds will be found dispersed and thrown at a great distance 4. The figures of the Seed-vessels as also of the Seeds of all the Ferns and those their Congeners called Capillary Plants are very near of the same shape and size notwithstanding the vast disproportion between them as particular common Fern Wall Rue Harts Tongue and Osmond Royal the first three of which being very remarkable for their unlikeness to each other and the last chiefly for its excelling so many thousand times in magnitude that of Wall Rue Which observations may seem to confirm the opinions of some learned Botanists that the affinity of Plants are to be judged by the figures of their Seeds 5. That Osmund Royal which excelleth all the other Ferns both in greatness comliness and vertues and which hath been accounted barren with the rest hath Vessels and Seeds of the same figure with the other and very near of the same size the extreme smalness of which even to invisibility and the greatness of the Plant one root whereof with all the growth out of it I have found weighing ten pounds and better is surpassingly more wonderful than that of Moss Seeds of which I have some kinds of them bearing Seeds that a great number of them with their Roots Stalks Leaves and Seeds do not weigh a Grain Besides I have found of the common Female Fern some which have been from the Roots to the utmost top of the Leaf nine foot high and within these three days measured the common broad-leaved Male Fern six foot and an half long some of the Leaves of which are among those I now send you 6. But that which appeared most admirable both to me and some other Gentlemen that were witnesses of it with me was the many differing kinds of small living Creatures wholly invisible to the naked eye and even through largely magnifying spectacles though some of them were to be seen through a deep Convex glass but with a Microscope when the Plant was newly gathered they might be seen nimbly running up and down among the Seed-vessels and some of them were so small as not to be above twice as big as the small Seeds in the bladders a description of some of which I may hereafter send you I have inclosed in the box sent you twelve sorts of Plants of this tribe being the greatest part of the number and only seven sorts of the Seeds those wanting are the Cetrach Wall Rue Maiden-hair and Polypody of which notwithstanding you may satisfie your self in the mean time till I can send them green by those small parcels of the Plants which you will find amongst the rest though by keeping they are withered The Seeds of the Ferns through a very excellent Microscope appeared of the bigness of a small Vetch or Seed of Lentiles to the naked eye and some of them shrink like the sides of white Pease with small regular knobs and hollows Those of Polypody are differing in colour and shape being yellowish as the others are brown red and formed like the Seeds of the smaller Medicas that is of a Kidney shape All the rest I found very near of the same form I cannot omit what I observed in Cetrach which Plant I have heretofore often considered and wondred at the ill-favoured roughness on the under side of the Leaf appearing like the fleshy side of tann'd Leather being wholly ignorant what Nature meant in it but now by my Microscope I find it a very pleasant object differing from all the rest wherein the curiosity of Nature in a Plant so abject as that appears is shewn beyond imagination This when fresh gathered and not bruised appears through the Microscope like fine thin Membranes such as the Wings of Flies chequered with figures after the manner of Honeycombs when the cells are full of honey and closed with Membranes amongst which as in so many Cells lie the Seed-vessels shaped as before is mentioned I doubt not but you have read the strange stories and fabulous conceits of Authors about Fern Seeds But Parkinson is more Orthodox in some things than any of them For he positively concludes from Gen. 1. 11 12. that all Plants have their Seeds and consequently Fern where if he had staid he had asserted a general truth But in coming to particulars he affirms as great an untruth in saying fol. 1036 and 1037. that the Seed is ripe at Midsummer according to the old traditional Fable and tells how it may be gathered whereas now is the very season of their seeding and at Midsummer this and the rest are not come to their full growth before which no Plant seeds That dustiness which