prove if cleared of their nitrous parts they pass the Potters Fire however they seemed before to be of different constitution This is evident in Vessels made of Tabacco-Clay or whatever the material be which has of late been so successfully employed for the sinding out of a composition if so I may call it nothing inferiour to the hardest Pourcelain and almost as beautiful by a worthy Member of this Mr. Hook Society But to return to our superficial Earth which we call the Mould I affirm it to grow and increase yearly in depth from the Causes aforesaid and in some places to that proportion as to have raised no inconsiderable Hills and Eminences by the accidental fall and rotting of Woods and Trees such as Birch and Beech c. which are not of a constitution to remain long in the ground as Fir Oak Elme and some other Timber will do and grow the harder without corruption and relenting into Mould as soft and tender as what they first were sown or planted in and of this I am able to give undenyable Instances I insist not here on the perpetual successions and generations of Flints and other Stones in the same places where they have been sedulously gathered off by many not improbably thought to proceed from Worm-casts hardened by the air and a certain lapidescent succus or spirit which it meets with And this for happening most on Downs very much exposed yet undisturbed is the more probable as on the other side it establishes our conjecture of the purest Moulds being capable of such a change that which is thus cast up by the Worms being so exceedingly elaborated and refined Therefore let no man be over-confident that because some Earths are soft fat and slippery they may not possibly consist of Sands of which there are so many kinds since 't is evident that even all fossile Bodies which can be reduced and brought to sands may by contrition of the Particles be rendred so minute as to emulate the finest Earths we have enumerated the compactedness and accidental mixtures resulting as we affirm from things extrinsecal not excluding exhalations passage of liquors and several juices to them or conveyed by subterraneous steams and influences be the Stones or Rock Glareous Metallic Testaceous Salts or any other Concretes whatsoever And what if we should indeed suspect all Earth to be arrant Salt nay Glass and that Glass how hard soever the off-spring and child of water the most fluid crystalline sincere and void of all other qualities 't is not impossible I think but by the different texture of its parts even that liquid Element may be brought to the consistence of a most different body to what it appears We know that Water besides that it was the first immense body which invested Gen. 1. the Chaos was by some thought to be the Mother of Earth nay the principia soluta of all mixts whatsoever and that the bottom of the Sea was made by a perpetual Hypostasis or subsidence which precipitated from every part of it to the Center I do not stand to justifie these speculations but to illustrate what I am about namely that Water is apt enough to be condensed and made hard and crude Mercury and running metal Crystals Gems and Pearls do more resemble it than that dirty and opace body which we usually denominate Earth Besides we find how divers Waters not only indurate and petrifie other substances but grow into Stones and leave a rocky Callus where they drop and continually pass and that all sands and stones are not diaphanous therefore that is no eviction but that they might once have been fluid since their opacity may be adventitious and proceed from sundry accidents so as granting this Hypothesis we are less to wonder that this matter is above all other so disposed to Vegetation and apt to produce Plants indued with Colour Weight Taste Odour and with sundry medical and other virtues as I think that excellent Philosopher Mr. Boyle an ornament of this Society does somewhere make out from the various Percolations Concoctions and Circulations of that fruitful Menstrue And if that be true that there is but one Catholic homogeneous fluid matter diversified only by shape size motion repose and various texture of the minute Particles it consists of and from which affections of matter the divers qualities result of particular bodies what may not mixture and an attent inspection into the anatomical parts of the vegetable family in time produce for our composing of all sorts of Moulds and Soils almost imaginable which is the drift of my present Discourse And why might not Solomon by this means have really had all kinds of Plants in his incomparable Gardens even Ebony Cloves Cinnamon and from the Cedar to the Shrub such as grew only in the remotest regions furnished as he doubtless was with so extraordinary an insight into all natural things and powers for the composing of Earths and assigning them their proper mixtures and ferments I do not here enquire whether there be not a Pansperme universally diffused individuated and specified in their several Matrixes and receptacles pro ratione mixti as they speak but I think there might very unexpected Phaenomenas be brought to light in vegetable productions did men seriously apply themselves to make such possible tryals as is in the power of Art to effect and how far Soils may be dissembled and the Air and Water attempered at least for some curiosities which may give light to more useful things I do not conclude but I should expect very rare and considerable things from an attentive and diligent Endeavour To this end the raising of artificial Dews and Mists impregnated with several qualities for the more natural refreshment of Exotic Plants were it may be no hard matter to effect no more than were the modification of the Air abroad as well as in our more confined Reserves where we set them in for Hyemation and during the most rigorous Colds As for mixtures of Earths Plants we know are nourished by things of like affinity with the constitution of the Soil which produces them and therefore 't is of singular importance to be well read in the Alphabet of Earths and Composts For as we have said Plants affect the Marsh Bog Mountain Vally Sand Gravel sat and lean Mould according to their tempers and for want of skill in this the same Plant not only languishes and starves but some we find to grow so luxuriate as to change their very shapes colours leaves roots and other parts and to grow almost out of knowledge of the skilfullest Botanists not here to speak of what alterations do accrue from transplanting and irrigations alone I mention this to incite the curious to essay artificial Compositions in defect of the natural Soil to make new confections of Earths and Moulds for the entertaining of the most generous and profitable Plants as well as curious especially if as I hinted we could
blackish cold and moist whitish hot and moist ruddy which yet exhalations from Minerals the heat of the Sun and other accidents may cause but generally they give preeminence to the darker Grays next to the Russet the clear Tawny is found worse the light and dark-ash-colour light also of weight and resembling Ashes good for nothing but the yellowish-red worst of all And all these are fit to be known as contributing to noble and useful Experiments upon due and accurate Comparisons and enquiry from the several Particles of their Constitutions Figures and Modes as far at least as we can discover them by the best auxiliaries of Microscopes Lotions Strainers Calcinations Triturations and grindings upon such discovery to judge of their qualities and by essaying variety of mixtures and imitating all sorts of Mould foreign or Indigen to compound Earths as near as may be resembling the natural for any special or curious use and be thereby enabled to alter the genius of Grounds as we see occasion The consideration of this it was which gave me the curiosity to fall upon the examining of a Collection I had made of several sorts both of Earth and Soils such as I could find about this Territory whereof some I washed to find by what would melt reside or pass away in the percolation of what visible Figure they chiefly seemed to consist armed as I was with an indifferent Microscope of which be pleased to take this brief account Gravelly and Arenous Earths of several sorts before they were washed appeared to be most of it rough Crystals of which some very transparent and gemmy few of them sharp or angular but roundish mixed with Atoms and Particles of a mineral hue which being well dryed and bruised on a hard serpentine Stone and Mullar of the same was with little labour reduced to an impalpable whitish Sand untransparent as it happens in the bruisings of most though never so diaphanous bodies which may be so reduced Yellow Sand had the appearance of Amber bruised an untransparent paler Sand. Fat rich Earth full of black spots without much discolouring the water as hardly did any of the Sands at all being dryed was reduced to a delicate sandy Dust with very little brightness Marsh Earth contained a considerable quantity of Sand the rest resembled the Fat Earth The Vnder-pasture mould had likewise a sandy mixture and what passed with the water after evaporation seemed to be an impalpable and very fine untransparent Sand. Clay consisted of most exceeding smooth and round Sands of several opacous colours Potters-Earth of different sorts ground small became like Sand of a yellowish grey and other colours exceeding polite and smooth A certain yellowish loamy Earth which had been brought to me with some Orange-Trees out of Italy was reduced to a bright soft Sand appearing more gemmy than in the other Loams Chalk resembled fine white Flower and some of it sparkling especially the harsher sort but the â—ender not Fullers-Earth appeared like Gum tragacanth a little wetted seemingly swelled yet glistering but when reduced to a fine dust a smooth Sand. Tabacco-Earth not much bruised was just like white Starch washed and well dryed it resembled the whitest Flower of Wheat a little candyed I had not the opportunity of examining the several sorts of Marles and so I proceed to the Dungs Neats-Dung the Cattel fed only with Fodder or little Grass for 't was in the Winter I made my observations appeared to be nothing but straws in the entire substance and colour little altered save what a certain slippery mucilage gave them sprinkled with a glistring Sand like Atoms of Gold but upon washing and drying again the tenacious matter vanished and the straws appeared separated and clear Sheeps-Dung was much like the former only the spires and blades of a fine short grass conglomerated and rolled up in the Pellets and the glew about it less viscous but it passed also away in the lotion Swines-Dung had the resemblance of dirty Bees Wax mingled with straws and husks which seemed like candied Eringo and some like Angelica Roots The Soil of Horses appeared like great wisps of Hay and little straws thin of mucilage and which being washed was easily to be discerned by a naked Eye Dears-Dung much resembled that of Sheeps Pigeons-Dung consisted of a stiff glutinous matter easily reducible to dust of a grey colour with some husky Atoms after dilution Lastly The Dung of Poultry was so full of Gravel small stones and sand that there appeared little or no other substance save a very small portion both of white and blackish viscous matter twisted up together of all the other the most foetid and ill smelling These were all I had time and leisure to examine I cannot say with all the accurateness they were capable of but sufficiently to encourage the more curious and to satisfie my self that the very finest Earth and best of Moulds however to appearance mixt with divers imperfect Bodies may for ought we know consist more of sandy particles than of any other whatsoever at least if from this Criterion we may be allowed to pronounce what they seem to the Eye Sands Crystals or Salts call them what you please the consideration of which being so universally the cause of Vegetation was no small inducement to me to see if by examining the several Earths though but by a cursory inspection I might possibly detect what Rudiments of such a Principle there were lurking in them abstractedly taken not that I opine Earth to be Salt alone and nothing else though perhaps little more besides Sulphur for so it produces no Vegetable that I know of without Water to dissolve and qualifie it for insumption and perhaps some other matter fitted to receive the Seeds and keep the Plant steady which yet for ought I can discern is also but a finer sort of Sand the clamminess of it being rather something extrinsecal and accidental to it than any thing natural and originally constitutive For the combination of these several Moulds which gives the ligature slipperiness and a divers temper seems rather to be caused by the perpetual and successive rotting of the Grass Plants Leaves Branches Moss and other excrescences growing upon it than any peculiar or solitary principle apart which in long tract of time has amassed together a substance heterogeneous to the ruder Particles which after the dilutions of the superficies that is of the rich and fatter Mould appears to be little other than Sand or fixed Salts of various Figures and Colours since even the most obdurate and flinty Pebble beaten and ground to powder or by Calcination reduced to an impalpable dust is as fine both to the Eye and smooth to the touch as the most Smectic Earths and Marles themselves such at least as you shall collect from the subsidence to appearance of the most Crystal Waters precipitated by deliquated Oyle of Tartar or the like and the more they be subdued and broken the harder they will
only for stability or as a womb and receptacle to their Seeds and Eggs for so we are taught to call the Seeds of Plants I shall not undertake to discuss Every body has heard of Van-Helmonts Ash-tree and may without much difficulty repeat what has been experimented by exquisitely weighing the Mould before and after a Gourd is planted in it and till it be grown to bulk and full maturity fed with water only how much liquor is insum'd and how little of the Earth consum'd to make some conjecture though I do not yet conceive the Earth to be altogether so dull and unactive as to afford no other aid to the Generation of what she bears the diversity of soils being as we have shew'd in this Discourse so infinitely various and the difference of invisible infusions so beyond our Arithmetic But if we give Liquids praedominion and at least the Masculine preference be they Salts or Spirits that is nitrous Spirits convey'd into her bosome how they will sure we are that Water and Vegetables are much nearer of alliance than either Water or Air are with the Earth and Mould But neither do I here also by any means exclude the Air nor deny its perpetual Commerce and benign influences charg'd as it comes with those pregnant and subtil particles which insinuating into the Earths more steady and less volatile Salts and both together invading the Sulphur and freeing them from whatsoever they find contumacious that intestine fermentation is begun and promoted which derives life and growth and motion to all that she produces That by the Air the most effete and elixiviated Mould comes to be repair'd and is qualified to attract the prolific nitrous spirits which not only disposes the Earth to this impregnating magnetism but converts her more unactive and fixed salts into quite another genius and nature the Learned Doctor Mayow has ingeniously Tract Medico-Phys Medico-Phys made out and all this by a naked exposure to the Air alone without which it produces nothing Nor can Plants totally excluded from the Air live or so much as erect themselves to any thriving purpose as being depriv'd of that breath and vital Balm which no less contributes to their growth and nourishment than does the Earth it self with all our assistances For that Plants do more than obscurely respire and exercise a kind of Peristaltic motion I little doubt from the wonderful and conspicuous attraction and emission which some of them discover particularly the Aloes and other Sedums and such as consisting of less cold and viscous parts send-forth their aromatic wafts at considerable distance Besides we find that Air is nearer of kin and affinity to Water than water is to Plants unless I should affirm that Air it self were but a thinner water for how else are those Vines and other Trees of prodigious growth maintained amongst the barren Rocks and thirsty Pumices where Rains but seldom fall if not from this rorid Air. Not to insist again that perhaps even these Rocks themselves may once have sprung from liquid Parents and how little even such as are expos'd to continual showers in other Climates abate of their magnitude since we rather find them to increase and that also the Fruits and Juices of Vegetables seem to be but the concretion of better concocted Water and may not only be converted into lignous and woody substance as the Learned Doctor Beale has somewhere instanc'd in a Discourse presented to You and Recorded in the Public Transactions but is apt enough to petrifie and become arrant stone Whatever then it be which the Earth contributes or whether it contain universally a Seminal virtue so specified by the Air Influences and Genius of the Clime as to make that a Cinnamon Tree in Ceilon which is but a Bay in England is past my skill to determine but 't is to be observ'd with no little wonder what Monsieur Bernier in his History of the Empire of the Mogol affirms to us of a Mountain there which being on one side of it intolerably hot produces Indian Plants and on the other as intemperately cold European and Vulgar Not here to pass without notice at least what even the most exhausted Mould will to all appearance produce spontaneously when once it has been well expos'd to the Air and heavenly influences if what springs up be not possibly from some volatil rudiments and seeds transported by winds higher than we usually place our Experiments unless we could fix them upon Olympus top But Porta tells us with more confidence that he took Earth from a most profound and dry place and expos'd it on such an eminence as to be out of reach even of the winds but it produc'd it seems only such Plants as grew about Naples and therefore may be suspected To return then again from this digression and pursue our Liquids where there is good Water there is commonly good Earth and vice versa because it bridles and tempers the Salts abates the acidity and fierceness of Spirits and imparts that usefull ligature and connexion to the Mould without which it were of no use for Vegetation In the mean time of all Waters that which descends from Heaven we find to be the richest and properest in our work as having been already meteoriz'd and circulated in that great digestory inrich'd and impregnated with astral influences from above at those propitious Seasons whence that saying Annus fructificat non Tell us has just Title to a Truth we every years Revolution behold and admire when the sweet Dews of Spring and Autumn hitherto constipated by cold or consumed with too much heat begin to be loosened or moderately condens'd by the more benign temper of the Air impregnating the prepared Earth to receive the Nitrous Spirits descending with their baulmy pearls yet with such difference of more or less benign as vapours haply which the Earth sends up may be sometimes qualified that nothing is more uncertain And this we easily observe from the Labours of the Industrious Bee and her precious Elixir when for some whole moneths she gathers little and at other times stives her waxen City with the harvest of a few propitious days But I am gone too far and therefore now shall set down only a few directions concerning watring and so dismiss the Subject and your patience 1. It is not good to water new-sown Seeds immediately as frequently we do and which commonly bursts them but to let them remain eight and forty hours in their beds till they be a little glutted with the natural juice of the Earth 2. Never give much water at one time for the surface of the Earth will often seem very dry when 't is wet enough beneath and then the Fibers rot about Autumn especially in Pots and Cases winter'd in the Green-house To be the more secure we have already caution'd Gardners to keep their bottoms hollow that nothing stagnate and fix too long which should be but transitory If such Curiosities
strike no root by September the leaves desert them certainly at Spring The reason is want of Air not moisture Therefore in all intervals of severer frosts and rigorous winter-weather be sparing of refreshings and unless you perceive their leaves to crumple up and fall which is their language for Drink give them as sparingly as you can Indeed during the Summer and when they are expos'd they require almost perpetual irrigation and that the liquor be well impregnat'd with proper Compost But in hard Frosts or foggy Seasons watering your housed Plants indangers them by mustiness and a certain Mill-dew which they contract On the other hand Applications too dry create an intemperate thirstiness and then they drink unmeasurably and fall into Dropsies Jaundies Feavors swell languish and rot and if the liquor prove too crude as commonly it does if taken from running and hungry fountains it extinguishes the natural heat and obstructs the Pores and therefore when ever you are constrain'd to make use of such drink expose it first to the warm Sun for better concoction infusing Sheep Pigeons or Neats-dung to give it body But though spring-Spring-water be so bad slow running River is often very good and Pond-water excellent so it be sweet but all stinking pools mineral and bituminous waters are not for our use and often good Air is as needful as good water Worms Mouldiness Cankers Consumptions and other Diseases being the usual and fatal consequence of these vices If you be to plant in fresh and new broken-up Earth and that the season or mould be too dry 't is to be water'd but then give it a competent sprinkling or sifting of dry and fine mould upon what you have refresh'd and then beating it a little close with the back of your spade plant it successfully for this you will find to be much better than to water it after you have planted as the custom is and as you may observe in setting Violets Auricula's Primroses and other Capillaries planted in beds or bordures and then dash'd with a flood of water which so soon as the Sun has look'd upon resign and lose their tinctures scorch and shrivel up Lastly For the Season likewise of this work let it be towards the Evening in hot and summer dayes for the reason immediately assign'd for the moisture being in a short time drunk-up deserts the Plant to the burning Planet and hence it is that Summer mists are so noxious and Meridian watrings and therefore the best expedient is upon such exigencies to pour your refreshings rather all over the Area on which your Cases of choice and rare shrubs are plac'd and among the Allees and Paths between your Beds of Flowers for the raising artificial Dews by which is unfolded no common secret or water them per lingulam and guttatim than either with the Pot or Bucket And after this manner if at other seasons they stand in need of heat and comfort of warmth by strewing Sand or Cinders on the same intervals the reflection will recreate them upon all emissions of the Sun-beams As for grosser Plantations and Trees of old Orchard Fruits moderation is also to be observed and not to dash on such a quantity near the stem and body but first with the spade to loosen the Earth about them especially towards the extremities of the tenderest Roots which generally sprout at the ends of the most woody whose mouths are shut with tougher bark These therefore may be cut sloping to quicken them a little and make them strike fresh fibers especially if some rich and tempting mould be sensonably apply'd For Trees will as we shew'd with very little Earth to cover them take fast root provided you stablish them against impetuous winds shocks and accidents of force and thrive exceedingly with this refreshment Some make pretty large holes with an Iron-Crow or which is better a pointed stake and pour the liquor in at those overtures but besides that by this means they wound the roots which gangrenes and sometimes kills the Tree if the holes be not fill'd the Air and Moisture mouldies them So as when all is summ'd together there 's nothing comparable to frequent stirring up the Ground opening the dry clod and watring upon that and if you lay any fearnbrakes or other trash about them to entertain the moisture and skreen it from the heat let it not be wadded so close or suffer'd to lie so long as to contract any mustiness but rather loose and easie that the Air may have free intercourse and to break the more intense ardours of the scorching Sun-beams Thus I have exercis'd Your Lordships and these Gentlemens Patience with a dull Discourse of Earth Mould and Soil but I trust not altogether without some Fruit or at least not improperly pro hîc nunc as the Subject has Relation to what has so lately been produc'd and with happy event made out by those Learned Persons who have entertain'd this Noble Society with the Anatomy of Plants FINIS ERRATA Pag. 49. l. 22. r. un-uniform