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 Precedent, 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 identical 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 aim at performing all this, would be as fond a thought, as to put to Sea in a pair of Oars, with design to circled the whole Earth, and visit both the Poles. Yet since upon Mr. Surveyors 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 natural and assured strokes, as may persuade 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 joint 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 accompanied 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, than what hath been thus born out of Nature's 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 heedful 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 air 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 Acorn, than a spread vast Oak; or out of a single Bean, than that tall, green, tender Plant so furnished with stalk, leaves, flowers, buds, seeds, (all in their several 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 buried slightly in the moist ground, at a season when the approaching Sun (the great Archaeus and fire of nature) beginning to dilate and sublime up to the Superficies of the Earth, that volatile and balsamic salt which his remoteness during the Winter had suffered to be shrunk up together, and condensed and sunk deeper towards the Centre; 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 Acorn, must necessarily be that it swelleth and groweth bigger: for the substance of the water getting into the very substance of the grain that lieth 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 swollen body: which having thus obtained room for itself to perform such actions as in those circumstances are natural 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 natural body, we may read the fate which hangeth over political ones▪ when the inferior 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; unless a superior Architect, as in the present case of our bleeding Nation, everso missus succurere seclo, do come to draw light and order, out of that darkness 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 watery ones; and they calling the cold and dry ones to their several aides, will make a violent agitation through the whole mass, working and kneading the one into the other. This intestine motion, will cause a greater dilatation of the body so in combustion, than the first humecting of it did. For, the natural action of fire being to stream out from its Centre on all hands in a continued flood of extremely rarifyed atoms; 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 spiritual parts do get quite loose from the viscous ones; then that which followeth, is a total Putrefaction, Dissolution, and Destruction of the compound: But if it be kept within its due limits, than the body in which it was wrought, is raised to a nobler pitch, and the Ethereal spirits of it are actuated, and put in possession of their native virtue; and the feculent, insipid, 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 itself, and will take up a whole man to draw a complete Map of its Empire. He will find that there is no disease in man's 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 vessels, or that it is continued so long, that the spirits fly quite away, and thereby deliver over the remaining Mass to Putrefaction and Rottenness; Death, which is an essential dissolution of the whole compound, must necessarily follow. He will find that the cures of all diseases do proceed from sometimes raising fermentaton to a due pitch, that it may cast off what is hurtful to the whole compound; and otherwhiles precipitating it, so that all the tumultuary motions of it may be composed, and a perfect calm may be induced in place of it. And lastly, (not to trouble you with too many particulars, arising out of a digression) he will find that when ever nature intendeth the betterment of any body, she beginneth with dissolving and fermenting it in its due liquor; that so each essential part may be severed from his fellow, and refined to a nobler state than it enjoyed before; and then joined again in a much perfecter society with his equally ennobled companions, after the incorrigible faeces are thrown from their harmony and union. Thus plain Clay with water from Heaven, may be brought to a crystalline purity and permanence; and Gold to one of those gems, which in the Apocalypse we are told serve for the Pavement of the heavenly Jerusalem. Find but a menstruum of its own nature, in which it may be radically dissolved and fermented; and the rest of the work will be easy. But to make our Bean grow, we need not so great curiosity; and yet give me leave to say, the linear way of the one, is not more plain and easy than that of the other, to him that knoweth them. But be this how it will: As to the Bean, although the swelling and bursting forth of the fiery and viscous parts of it, will be towards all sides, according to the nature of fire, which streameth out from the centre every way to the circumference, yet it will be most efficacious upwards towards the air, because it meeteth with less resistance that way, than any other: For downwards the Earth lieth more compacted than it doth over the grain, it having been stirred and broken to make the Mould loose and porous; and besides, there is a great quantity of it, which the further you go downwards, groweth the more difficultly penetrable; whereas, from the grain to the superficies of the Earth, and to the free air, the journey is very small, and no obstacles in the way, by reason the Sun, Air, Dew and Rain do still work upon it to make it light and spongy. Upwards then, and towards the air must be the speediest and the greatest concourse of these hot and viscous streams; which coming into the cold air, and being invaded by it on every hand, they contract themselves into such a figure, as is fittest to resist the assaults of such an enemy; which is the circular one: for (to speak physically) the ambient air pressing these streams on all sides, reduceth them into the narrowest room possible to serve them: and the circular figure being the most capacious of all others whatsoever, the cold air condenseth them into it, that so most matter may be contained in least space. In the mean time, the streams out of the cracked skin of the Bean downwards and sidewards, are not altogether inefficacious, though not so vigorous as those that ascend upwards towards the air. There will be this difference between the ascending and the descending or spreading parts, which flow out of the fermenting mass; that the first will be hot, moist, airy, and consequently green and tender ones; the others will be more dry, cold, earthy; and therefore rough, hard and white; whose hardness and roughness will also be increased by the Earth's pressing upon it. Thus than the root is form, which drawing continually new juice to it from the moist Earth that environeth it, and abounding with heat that still digesteth and sublimeth up the moisture it sucketh in; and the outward agents (that is, the Sun and Aire) performing also their parts; it followeth that new digested and spiritual juice is continually sublimed up into that round, green, tender part, which was sprung up out of the Earth into the air; and that now we may call the stalk. Thus both the innate and the extern heat, do concur to enlarge this plant, by filling both the root and the stalk of it with continual new moisture: whereof the one being exposed to the Sun and Wind, must needs grow rough and hard on the outside; to defend from outward injuries of weather, the inner-part that remaineth tender and juicy, and would else be soon nipped in its ascending; and the other thrusteth down continually hard parts deeper into the Earth, whereby it remaineth firm and able to resist the agitations of the wind, without being easily eradicated. Now it fareth with the plant, as with a kindled fire of wood; the more fuel is applied to feed it, the more groweth the heat: so here, the daily and hourly accrueing of new balsamic juice, increaseth the heat that is within the plant; and consequently there is continually more and more juice sent upwards. Thus the stalk groweth higher. But the further that this ascending juice goeth from the main Centre of it that sublimed it up, the weaker and fainter it becometh, and the less able to resist the invasions of the cold ambient air. So that, when it can creep up no higher, it settleth there: Yet continually the innate heat sublimeth up more and more juicy, which not being able to pierce the skin that it meeteth with at its journies end, it swelleth there into a button, that groweth continually bigger and bigger, till at length the skin that enwrappeth this subliming and daily more digested juice, not being able any longer to contain the quantity and activity of it, breaketh; and from that cloven button or knot, new juice ascendeth in the same manner and progress as before; till at a just distance, proportioned to the causes that produce it, a new knot is made; And so from one to another, every one less than the other, till at length there wanteth juice to drive the Plant any higher; and withal, the subliming heat groweth fainter at so great a distance; and the Sun beginneth to grow less active upon it; And in a word, the whole oeconomy of nature conspireth to set here a period to the extension of the Plant. Some plants do use to shoot only upwards; but in others, when the button is forced asunder by the ascending juice; that juice pusheth out as well to the sides as upwards; and so a branch is made, breaking out of the main stock: And it happeneth that there do break out so many such branches, as there are concurrent circumstances and accidents (such as we have here mentioned) to form them. But when nature hath set a period to the extent of her growing Plant, and is as it were weary of teeming any longer with such strong and nervous issues (that is to say, that the innate heat, the juice, and the Sun, do begin to flag in their operations, (for the reasons I have touched) and yet never consenting to be idle and sit still, she betaketh herself to works of less robustuous force; and refining still more and more by gentle sublimations and depurations, the juice she hath brought up thus high, she continually maketh it cast off the grosser parts, which stick by the way as not being nimble enough to rise higher, nor subtle enough to pass through those straight channels which afford the refined spirits an easy course. Yet are not these gross parts without employment (I call them gross, only in respect of the purer spirit; for otherwise they are much more subtle and concocted, than those which remain in the stalk, trunk, or bark of the plant) it is true, they are not able to go along with the aethereal spirit, which taketh a higher flight, as you shall by and by hear. And they are continually increased with hourly supplies of like gross or subtle parts as you will please to call them: for indeed they are either, or both; subtle in respect of the grosser juice they are sublimed from, and that remaineth below in the body and trunk of the plant; And gross in respect of the ardent spirit and balsamic oil that is rectified from them. This perpetual new concourse of fresh matter to the branches, which grow too full to contain it, is the cause of their cleaving in several places where this juice pusheth to get out. If it be very viscous and unctuous, and have been long concocted by the Sun without and the innate heat within, before it breaketh out; it showeth itself in a gummy substance, that retaineth in it the nature of the whole Plant; as I shall hereafter convince experimentally, besides the evidence of the reason that concludeth it must be so. But if nothing have intervened to hinder or alter the ordinary course; then, this more watery than unctuous juice, making its way into the air through the tender skin of the branch or st●lk, suffereth all the like actions upon it as were formerly wrought upon the first juice that broke out of the original Bean or Acorn; and so it beginneth to be form there into a new Plant, of a shape, figure, and nature proportioned to the great one it shooteth from. First, a third shooteth out in a direct line, that we may fitly call the stalk of this new little Plant; and at a distance adequate to the heat that sublimeth and pusheth it out, and to the cold air that nippeth and shrinketh it into a button, ●he first knot is form in this little stalk: from whence new streams or thredds are pushed out, both forwards and sideways, as we have formerly explicated in the first gross forming of the bulky plant. These thredds that are thus spun out every way one from another, do grow to be so near one another, that the steams which necessarily must accompany them (for wheresoever heat driveth out store of moisture, there cannot choose but be an atmosphere of emanations environing and besieging, as I may say the main stream) do easily mingle with one another; and being of a viscous and adhaesive nature (as all such moist and hot emanations must necessarily be) they fill up with their glewy matter the intervals between the main threads. Which we may compare, not improperly to a curious Work-womans' filling up of Flanders-lace with fine thread: in the doing whereof, she interweaveth so cunningly the thread she bringeth, with those standards of threads (as I may call them) that she already findeth in her work before her, that whiles she filleth up all the vacuities, she still leaveth those main threads so discernible, that your eye can after all distinguish the work of the Pattern as clearly as if there had been nothing done to it. And so in this filling up the interstices of the new little Plant, you see plainly all the sinews and threads of it after the viscous steames which hang about them are plaited and wrought into a continuate substance, that is jagged or dentelated according as the main threads are pushed forth to be longer or shorter, which dependeth upon the heat that carrieth the viscous parts with it. And thus the leaf, a second Plant is form out of the branches and twigs of the first, retaining the shape, figure, and other qualities of it. Now all the while that this is doing with the grosser parts, which the rectified spirit casteth off; The heat which rectifyeth and sublimeth it, pusheth forth this elaborate juice into more tender substances, more abounding with vigour and spirits; Especially at the extremity of the branches, where the solidest part of the abounding humour groweth (as before in the rising of it in the stalk of the Bean, or in the body of the Oak) into a button; but the more volatile and less substantial part of this highly rectified juice or rather new spirit, is spread round about it in thin sheets; which being full of the aereal and sulphureous parts of this rectified spirit (which here by the iterated rectifications, becometh like an ardent water) delighteth the eyes with variety of colours, and the nose with pleasantness of smell (for sulphur is the universal great painter and perfumer of the world) but being of so volatile a nature as the much refining and often rectifying it, reduceth it to be of; these flowers are not of long durance, but soon fade and fall away, as also their beautiful and odorous spirits exhale from their dead and withered habitations. But all this while that this aethereal or wild spirit recreateth himself thus in these transitory flowers; a more solid and substantial one, and that endureth a more vigorous concoction, (as in distillations, where the balsamic oil cometh last) filleth and swelleth the button that hath by this time lost his gay companions, the faded flowers. And as it groweth bigger, it groweth also softer and tenderer in the whole bulk of it. For, the Sun still draweth to the outside, the subtlest, the most jucy, and the most aereal parts of it: and therefore all that substance must be soft, mellow, and tender; only the extremity and the last superficies of the outside, must needs have contracted some hardness and roughness, from the coldness of the air, and the biting sharpness of the wind, which maketh the skin of a Pear, or Apple, or Walnut, rougher and harder than the pulpy tender substance next adjoining to it. Yet out of the course here set down, it will follow that towards the centre of this tender substance there must needs be some hard, dry, and rough matter. For, seeing that the Sun from without attracteth to the superficies of the fruit the most spiritful and airy parts of the ascending juice; and that on the other side the innate heat from within driveth it out, and extendeth it from the Centre to the superficies: It is impossible but that about the middle from whence all this attraction and expulsion of tender juice is made, there must remain store of Earthy parts deprived of moisture, and baked into a hard nucleous substance, containing much of fire; though little of air and water in it. For it is the nature of fire to incorporate itself with the substance it baketh and calcineth; as you have a sensible experience in the calcining of Antimony by a burning-glasse, when the calcined body increaseth much in weight, though at the same time the fire driveth away a wonderful quantity of the moist and volatile parts of the smoking mass. This button, thus dilated and brought to this pass, we call the fruit of the plant: whose harder part, encloseth oftentimes another that is not so hard as it is dry. And the reason of this is, that the outside or superficies of this Earthy substance, is become so exceeding hard by the concurring causes which make it so, that no moisture (or at least in no considerable quantity) can soak through it. And then, the action of heat being continually prevalent upon what ha●h no supply of moisture, it must necessarily follow that all the substance which is enclosed within that hard superficies, must needs grow drier and drier; till at length it becometh like fine subtle dust compacted together; which showeth itself to be so, asoon as it is bruised out of the husk that containeth it: as we daily see in Corn ground at a Mill; and it is as evident in the kernels or little seeds of Pears, Apples, Oranges, Almonds, and the like; if you work in like manner upon them, after they are throughly dried. Yet this dryness is not to such a degree, as when in Calcination by violence of fire the moist and volatile Essential parts of a body are entirely driven away. For here the agents being gentle and natural ones, and the ambient moisture and cold defending the seed from excess of drought and heat, and the whole course of this progress tending rather to Fixation then to Calcination; It happeneth that in every parparcell of this compacted dust, the nature of the whole Plant resideth perfectly and entirely; as it were, contracted into a small quantity. For, the juice which was first in the button, (that is now become the fruit) and had passed from the root through the manifold varieties of the divers parts of the Plant, and had suffered much concoction and depuration, partly from the Sun and partly from the inward heat imprisosed in that harder stony part about the middle of the fruit; is by these passages, strainings, concoctions, and sublimations, become at length to be of the nature of a tincture extracted out of the whole plant; and is at last dried up into a kind of Magistery, full of Fire and of Salt. This is that which we call the Seed; which being buried in the Earth, and soaked with fitting humidity, in such sort as we have here at large declared, setteth on foot this work anew, and repeateth over again all that we have hitherther observed in this long progress: in which the steadiness of the Supreme Architects hand that steereth and governeth it, is never enough to he admired; who hath set on foot such an exact concurrence of divers and most distinct causes, to conspire all to one and the same end, that still in general nature ariveth to her destined period without being frustrated of the scope she leveleth at. Whereas a man that should stay his consideration at every joint of this long career, and should reflect how easily some little circumstance in so vast a multiplicity of them might be turned awry (as when an atom of dust falleth among the wheels of a nice clock) or rather, how difficult it must needs be for one single governor to keep them all in their due aequilibrity; might be apt to conclude that not one of ten thousand should prove as it doth. And he that should look barely upon the two extreme terms, the beginning and the completing of a plant, might think there were a perpetual miracle in the production of vegetables, and might be excused for having recourse to a vis formatrix, and such other insignificant terms. But another that considereth the whole course of nature set on foot by God Almighty for this admirable work; and fixeth his foot at every particular joint, not stirring it from thence till he have fully examined and discussed what must necessarily follow out of such or such matter, in such or such circumstances, so and so tempered, and so and so wrought upon; will evidently discern that it is throughout impossible, any thing should happen in it otherwise then just what and how it doth. And it is want of consideration and of judgement, which maketh men fly to occult and imaginary quali●ies, to shroud their ignorance under inconceiveable terms: Whereas nature in herself is pervious and open to humane discovery, if a due course be taken to dissect and survey her.  
Out of what I have discoursed of the progress of Nature in the growth of Trees, and of all manner of Plants, it will be easy to satisfy such Questions and Doubts concerning them, as at the first sight may seem full of difficulty. As for example; why the grain of a tree should affect such or such a situation and tendence in respect of the great Universe, which some shallow Clerks will have pass among the recondite Mysteries of Nature, shut up to mortal eyes; further than that they will have a secret instinct and sympathy to be between Plants and the polar Star. All which is nothing but this, that the tender plant at its first pushing forth, being checked by the ambient air, and warmed by the enlivening Sun; is most straightened by the cold Earthy atoms which are drawn by the Sun from the Poles to the Aequator. For there being a constant perpetual course of them that way (as I have showed in my Book of Bodies) such things as lie in their Channel must necessarily be affected with their continually repeated strokes. And that side of them which is exposed to their immediate blows, must be most sensible of them. On the other side the Sun with his warm and moist Regiment of atoms, embracing the opposite part of the plant, must needs work a contrary effect to the other. And thus you see a plain and evident reason, why one side of the plant cannot fail of being close, hard, and heavy in respect of the other, and tending to some acuteness rather than perfect round. The other will be spongy, tender, light, and dilated; having its Figure enlarged beyond roundness. Now this first impression serving for a Rule to what afterwards shall follow, and the outward case of the plant, being as it were a mould to cast the succeeding juice in; it will follow that at every Year, or Month, or Week, (according to the nature of the plant) when new juice is sublimed up into the hardened case, and that this new juice descendeth the case to make room for itself, it will take such ply and Figure, acuminated on the one side and obtuse on the other, as the case already hath, and is apt to give. This will be repeated every year in Trees and in such plants as count their livelihood by years. And by these circles of the grain, you shall not only know how the Tree grew, where it was planted in regard of North and South; but also how old it is. And if you will transplant it to another place, you must have a care to set it in the same Situation it first grew in; for otherwise, exposing the tender, mellow, Southside of the Tree, to the sharp, hard wedges of the Northern air, they will so cleave and batter it, that in a little while it will exhale its spirits and die. And the same reason obliligeth also, that every piece of wood, even after it is dead and hewed out, be Magnetical and have respective Poles to the Universe. For, the constant course of one sort of atoms running one way through it, must needs have bored and wrought such figured Channels as are proportionate to admit such figured and qualified atoms as they are, and to reject and repel others of a different nature and formation: In such sort as I have at large discoursed in my above mentioned Treatise, where I set down the whole Doctrine of the Loadstone and its Phoenomens', and do give the reasons of them. From the same cause it will follow, that if you turn a piece of wood into a Sphere, or Cylinder, or other Regular Figure, and put it into the water, one precise side of it will always sink, and the other swim out of the water. And out of what I have said, the reason is evident, why after much drought in a hot Summer, Trees and Plants will languish, whither and look as though they were dead, till some Rain do fall to cure their sickness; and then all Vegetables take a new green habit, as though a second Spring were come to animate them. All which is nothing else but that the long continued scorching Beams of the Sun had Exhausted all Humidity from the Plants: And then, fresh moisture coming to the Roots, it is sublimed thence into the stalks, and maketh a new Germination and Leaves in the manner I have declared.  
Many other such consequencies would irrefragably follow out of the premised principles, which would be too long to pursue further here. It is enough to have given the hint of thus much; after which any ordinary reflection will retrieve innumerable other conclusions. But I think it will not appear tedious to you that I touch a little upon what course may repair a decaying Plant; or exceedingly augment the virtue of a prosperous one; since not only the Philosophy of it is pleasing and considerable; but also the practice of it may be profitafitable to the Commonwealth, and useful (with due Analogy) even to humane bodies. The Sickness, and in the end the Death of a Plant, in its natural course, proceedeth from want of that balsamic Saline juice which I have said maketh it Swell, Germinate, and Augment itself. This want may proceed, either from a Destitution of it in the place where the Plant groweth, as when it is in a barren soil or bad air; or from a defect in the Plant itself, that hath not vigour sufficient to attract it though it be within the sphere of it, as when the Root is become so hard, obstructed and cold, as that it hath lost its Vegetative Functions. Now both these may be remedied in a great measure, by one and the same Physic. It is not every humidity that is of a prolifike nature. If water have not her fire in her, she will avail little to make Plants fructify. The watering of soil with cold hungry springs, doth little good. Whereas muddy Saline waters brought to overflow a piece of ground, do enrich it much. Gentle showers, especially in the Aequinox Seasons, are very fruitful. But above all, well digested Dew, maketh all Plants luxuriat and prosper most. Now what may it be that endueth these Liquors with such prolifike virtue? The mere water which is common to them all, cannot be it. There must be something else enclosed within it, unto which the water serveth but for a Vehicle. Examine it by the Spagyric Art, and you will find it is nothing else but a nitrous salt which is dilated in the water. It is this Salt which giveth foecundity to all things. And from this Salt (rightly understood) not only all Vegetables, but also all Minerals draw their origine.  
Here, it were not from the purpose to put you in mind how the Ancient Poets (who comprised their deepest wisdom in familiar Fables) tell us long stories of their Salt-begotten Goddess, and adumbrated their best knowledge of nature under Saline veils. But I should be too prolix if I hunted too far every chase that riseth before me in this copious Forest. I will come back to my own and others plain experiences. By the help of plain Salt-Peter, dilated in water and mingled with some other fit Earthy substance that may familiarize it a little with the corn into which I endeavoured to introduce it, I have made the barrenest ground far outgo the richest in giving a prodigiously plentiful harvest. I have seen hempseed soaked in this Liquor, that hath in the due time made such Plants arise, as for the tallness and hardness of them, seemed rather to be Coppice wood of fourteen years' growth at least, then plain hemp. The Fathers of the Christian Doctrine at Paris, do still keep by them for a Monument (and indeed it is an admirable one) a Plant of Barley consisting of 249. stalks, Springing from one Root or Grain of Barley, in which they counted above 18000. Grains or seeds of Barley. But do you think that it is barely the Salt-Peter imbibed into the Seed or Root, which causeth this Fertility? no; that would be soon exhausted, and could not furnish matter to so vast a progeny. The Salt-Peter there, is like a Magnes which attracteth a like Salt that Foecundateth the Air, and that gave cause to the Cosmopolite to say, there is in the Air a hidden food of life. Such Airs as are most impregnated with this benign fire, are healthful to live in. Others, which abound with Earthy exhalations or Marishy vapours, and have little balsamic Salt in them, are as unsound. This is the food of the Lungs, and the nourishment of the Spirits. Cornelius' Drebell, having contracted a great quantity of this into a narrow room, could recreate and revive his languishing guests in his straight house under water, when they had fed upon all the balsam that was in the Air shut up with them; by opening a Fiole that dilated itself with fresh Spirits into that stale depredated and exhausted Air. This spirit then that is in the Air, is drawn (as it were by a Loadstone) by the Saline Liquor that is imbibed into the Seed which is full of it. My own eyes are witnesses of the wonderful corporifying of it. I have seen it grow in a strange proportion; In a Villa at Rome, I sowed some Barley thus prepared; And what with the Dew, what with the Air, and what with the Sun, I should in the mornings, by then the Sunbeams had dried up the superfluous moisture, see sproutings up of pure Salt-Peter of a prodigious height all about and over the Seeds that lay slightly covered with the loose mould. They would be above an inch, nay two inches long, of the pur●st Crystalline Salt-Pe- that could be seen. And it is upon this principle that the Pope in his State, and the old Duke of Bavaria in his, did first make and then nourish, M●nes of Salt-Peter; whose Roots and Quarries are quite different from other Minerals: For, they are underfoot in the Earth; and these over our heads, in the Air: This is the Earth flying over men's heads, which a late subtle Philosopher prescribeth to be taken for his great work. Now in this Salt are enclosed the Seminary virtues of all things. For, what is it, but a pure extract drawn by the Suns-beames from all the bodies that he darteth his Rays upon, and sublimed up to such a height of place as leaveth all feculence behind it, and is there in that exalted R●g●on of the Limbeck baked and incorporated with those very beams themselves which refined this extract out of its drossy Oar? Therefore I wonder not to see any sort of herb grow upon the highest Towers, where it is certain no man ever came to sow that Plant. And the Loadstone or Magnes of a like substance (though nothing near so pure) that is in the Earth, the creeping toad there, sucketh and pulleth down this flying Dragon to it; and both of them do become one body. And thus you see plainly and familiarly explicated the great Aphorism of the Smaragdine Table; That what is above, is like what is below. The Sun is the Father, the Moon is the Mother; the Earth is the Matrix wherein this product is hatched; and the Air conveyed it thither. This Universal Spirit then being Homogeneal to all things, and being in effect the Spirit of Life, not only to Plants, but to Animals also: were it not worth the labour to render it as useful to men's bodies, as to the reparations of Plants? Albertus Magnus purchased the reputation of a Magician, for making all sorts of Fruit grow plentifully and perfectly, in the depth of a hard Winter in Germany, by means of this aethereal balsam. If it were made proportionable to men's bodies, there is no doubt, but it would work alike effect upon them. Gold is of the same Nature as this aethereal Spirit; or rather, it is nothing but it, first corporifyed in a pure place, and then baked to a perfect Fixation. Raymund Lul in his excellent Treatise the intention operanti●m, describeth admirably well the Genealogy of it. If then this perfect body (I mean Gold) could be rendered familiar and disgestible to ours, there is no doubt but it would prove a kind of Tree of Life to us. It is of itself too firmly composed for any Agent upon Earth to dissolve it. But peradventure the Mother that bore him, may reincrudate him and reduce him back into his first volatile principles.  
Enough, if not too much is said of these Curiosities by way of digression, and to entertain you (Noble Auditors) with pleasing variety; Let us come back to our Plant, and inquire if it be not possible to render it perpetual, or rather to convert it into a permanent substance and state, no longer subject to the Vicissitudes of time; and outward Agents, that destroy all things: So to bring it to a kind of glorified body, such as we hope ours will be after the Resurrection. Quercetanus the famous Physician of King Henry the fourth telleth us a wonderful story of a Polonian Doctor that showed him a dozen glasses Hermetically Sealed, in each of which was a different Plant; for example, a Rose in one, a Tulip in another, a Clove-Gilly-flower in a third; adso of the rest. When he offered these Glasses to your first view, you saw nothing in them but a heap of Ashes in the bottom. As soon as he held some gentle heat under any of them, presently there arose out of the Ashes, the Idea of a Flower; the Flower and the Stalk belonging to those Ashes; and it would shoot up and spread abroad to the due height and just dimensions of such a Flower; and had perfect Colour, Shape, Magnitude, and all other accidents, as if it were really that very Flower. But when ever you drew the heat from it, as the Glass and the enclosed Air and matter within it grew to cool by degrees, so would this Flower sink down by little and little, till at length it would bury itself in its bed of Ashes. And thus it would do as often as you exposed it to moderate heat, or withdrew it from it. I confess it would be no small delight to me to see this experiment, with all the circumstances that Quercetan setteth down. Athanasius Kircherus at Rome assured me he had done it; and gave me the process of it. But no industry of mine could effect it. Another I did, by instructions from the former Author; and I found it exactly true as he recounteth it. It is worth your knowing. I calcined a good quantity of Nettles, Roots, Stalks, Leaves, Flowers; in a word the whole Plant. He produceth the example in this very Plant; and I would not vary in the least circumstance from what he taught. With fair water I made a lie of these Ashes; which I filtered from the insipid Earth. This lie was exposed by me in the due season to have the Frost congeal it. I performed the whole work in this very house where I have now the honour to discourse to you. I calcined them in the fair and large Laboratory, that I had erected under the Lodgings of the Divinity Reader: And I exposed the lie to congeal in the Window of my Library, among my Lodgings at the end of your Great Gallery. Hans Hunneades the Hungarian, was my operator. And it is most true, that when the water was congealed into ice, there appeared to be abundance of Nettles frozen in the ice. They had not the colour of Nettles. No greenness accompanied them. They were white. But otherwise, it is impossible for any Painter to delineate a throng of Nettles more exactly, than they were designed in the water. As soon as the water was melted, all these Idaeall shapes vanished: but as soon as it was congealed again, they presently appeared afresh. And this game I had several times with them, and brought Doctor Mayerne to see it; who I remember was as much delighted with it as myself. What could be the reason of this Phoenomen? There is no doubt but that a main part of the Essential substance of a Plant is contained in his fixed Salt. This will admit no change into another Nature; but will always be full of the qualities and virtues of the Plant it is derived from; but for want of the volatile Armoniacall and Sulphureall parts, it is deprived of colour. If all the Essential parts could be preserved, in the severing and purifying of them, I see no reason but at the reunion of them, the entire Plant might appear in its complete perfection, so one could find a fit medium to dilate it in. Were not this then a true Palingenesis of the original Plant? I doubt it would not be so. For speaking rigorously, I cannot allow Plants to have Life. They are not Se Moventia, They have not a principle of motion within them. It is the operation of outward Agents upon them, that seateth on foot all the dance we have above so heedfully observed, and which so near imitateth the motions of Life. And if it be not a living thing, than it is all of it in perpetual Flux and Change, without having any part of it enjoy a fixed and permanent Being, for the least moment's space; and consequently, there can be no Resurrection of it after once it is destroyed, since it never was at any time a determinate It, or Thing; But as Coals are made of wood by the action of Fire upon it; and Ashes again of them, and Glass of Ashes; each of them a quite different substance from what the precedent was: So, I conceive that a new aereal body and thing is made out of the Plant that furnished matter for this new substance, and whose substantial form is totally destroyed, and a new one produced into the World; which is accompanied with many accidents like unto many of those that belonged to the precedent substance. I remember another pretty experiment that Doctor Davisson showed me in his Laboratory at Paris. He had been drawing the Oil and Spirit of a certain kind of resinous Gum: And it so happened that the Glass along which it rose; was all covered over on the inside with Portraitures of Firre-Trees (from whence that resin distilled) so exactly done that no Painter in the World could have drawn their shapes more completely. The like happened to me once in distilling the Gum of Cherry-Trees. But none of these Ideas do come so near unto the real Palingenesis, as what I have done more than once upon Cray-fish. Wash them clean from any Earthiness; and boil them very throughly (at least two hours' space) in sufficient quantity of fair water. Keep this decoction, and put Crevisses into a Glasse-Limbeck, and distil all the Liquor that will arise from them; which keep by itself. Then calcine the Fishes in a reverberatory Furnace, and extract their Salt with your first decoction; which filter, and then evaporate the humidity. Upon the remaining Salt pour your distilled Liquor, and set i● in a moist place to putrify; and in a few days you shall find little animals moving there, about the bigness of Milet Seeds. These you must feed with blood of an Ox, till they be as big as pretty large buttons, than put them into a wooden pail of River-water and Ox blood, changing the water and blood every third day; and so you may bring them on to what bigness you please.  
All this leadeth me to speak something of the Resurrection of humane bodies. There we may find some firm and solid footing. Hitherto we have wandered up and down in the Mazes of Fleeting matter, quae nunquam in eodem statu permanet. And with great truth did Job apply that expression to the State of men living in this World. But as soon as we shall have put off our frail Mortality, we shall be in a state of permanence and immutability. Not only whiles the Soul is separated from her Earthy Companion, but when she shall be clothed again, that new flesh will partake of the constancy of her glorious Mate. But why do I call it new flesh? I may be pardoned for doing so, when I consider the new qualities and endowments it shall have put on. But otherwise, in substance and reality, it is the same, the very same, that (for example) accompanied me in this long and tedious Pilgrimage upon Earth. How is this? If a Cannibal should feed upon my body, and convert it into the substance of his, can both of us rise again with the same bodies we enjoyed here? Yes, without doubt we may. And I conceive, that the taking away of this difficulty, which hath so highly perplexed even the best Christians, will be so welcome a performance to them who yet have not met with it; that for its sake you will pardon the tediousness and coarseness of all I have hitherto said. And with that, I will cease further troubling you. But let us first rightly understand one another. I do not undertake to show here how this great work is wrought: nor much less to determine that it will follow out of the force of nature, after the great day's Conflagration hath calcined the whole Mass of Matter into a formless heap of Ashes: So disposing it, by excluding and destroying all particular forms, to admit the action of subsistent ones upon it. But my undertaking is, to convince that there is no impossibility nor contradiction in nature, against this great and amazing Mystery. If there were contradiction in it, it could not be true; it were not the subject of a Miracle. But if I prove that there is no repugnance against the feasibility of it, I am confident I shall not miss of hearty thanks from those sincere believers who have nothing to shake the firmness of their Faith, but the suspected impossibility of the Mystery. Thus then. I shall begin with enquiring what it is that maketh a body continue still the same. All bodies are composed of matter and form. In saying of which I do not mean that there are two distinct entities, which being put together like meal and water do concur jointly to compose a body, as they make bread. But they are notions which are grounded upon a real Foundation in the object from whence they arise. In the object there is that, which correspondeth adaequatly to the notions we frame of these two principles. We see that this which is now Coal, was larely wood, somewhat must be common to both these distinct substances; else, we must allow the first to have been annihilated by the change, and that nothing remaineth of it after the action of fire: And consequently that the second is absolutely created, without any preaexistent matter to serve for a Basis to this production. This obligeth us to have recourse to somewhat that is common to both these things. This that is thus common to both, is of itself neither the one nor the other: But is that, which may be either the one or the other. So that truly it is not this nor that nor any determinate thing: But it is a Capacity to be this or that or any thing whatsoever. And this capacity, is called in the Schools, Matter. Now that which filleth and actuateth this capacity, and maketh it be a determinate thing, is that which they call the Form. So that the Form, is the completing and perfecting of a body, and maketh it to be this or that, and fixeth it in the State of Being: whereas the matter abstracted from the Form, hath no determinate being, no individuation, is in effect and actually nothing; but hath, or rather is a capacity to be any thing. It must not then be on the side of Matter, that we must look for the individuation and Identification of our bodies after the Resurrection. All matter is indifferent to every Form. There is no this or that in matter; otherwise then as the Form engrosseth it to itself; and thereby maketh it this or that. And consequently as long as the Form remaineth the same, the thing is the same, and the matter is the same. Were it not for this, how could any body under Heaven remain the same even but for a short Moment's space? All sublunary things are in a perpetual Flux. The contrast of the Elements among themselves, within every body; and other bodies without it, working also perpetually upon it, are causes that out of every body there are continual emanations, and that there are continual supplies advenient to it. Every thing is like a River that is in a perpetual course. Which though we account it the same River to day as it was yesterday; yet in truth there is not one drop of water in it to day that was in it yesterday. But because it is filled out of the same common Magazine of (in itself) undistinguished water which filled it yesterday and a hundred years agone; and that it is comprised in the same Channel; It is still esteemed to be the same River. I remember to have seen in the King of Frances Garden at Saint german, very curious Grottos; whereof one was adorned with a cast of water, so contrived, that as fast as the water fell down into the reserve or Basin which was at the bottom of the Pipe that cast it up with force a pretty height, the water was still conveyed up again into that casting Pipe; and so made a kind of perpetual motion. The Gardener to entertain his Spectators▪ did use to put sundry hollow instruments of different shapes and Figures upon the mouth of the Pipe that did cast up the water, so that the coarcted stream would spread itself abroad as soon as the instruments afforded it liberty, sometimes like a Bell, sometimes like a Crown, otherwhiles like a Flower de Luce, and the like, according to the Form of the Instrument that comprised and governed the course of the water. There were several Bells and several Crowns, with peculiar differences belonging to them; and so of the rest of the Machine's. If now after I had seen two or three differently appearing Bells, or Crowns; I should desire to see again that Bell, or that Crown, which the Gardener showed we first, and he should put on that Machine which he did put on the first time; should I not have reason to say it were the same Bell or Crown I saw first? The water that furnisheth matter to all these varieties and games, is still the same. As long as it is in its great bulk, there is no this or that part of it: all of it is one Mass, that hath no this or that distinguished any where in it. But if you take never so few drops of it in a particular vessel, that divideth it from the rest; then, there is this glass-full (for example) distinct from the rest of the common Magazine. And so, whiles the first Engine or Pipe to represent a Bell, is put on a second time; it denominateth truly that Bell to be the same that it was at first; and while it is in continual fl●x of new parts of water succeeding those which run down into the Basin, and that rise again to continue that figure; it is still the same Bell. Much more rigorously is it true that my eyes, my ears, my whole body, now after near 60. years' durance in nature, are the same, the very same, they were, when I lay a weak Embryon in my Mother's womb. The continual flood of transpiration, and the continual supply of augmentation, do nothing hinder the Identity of this body of mine, as long as the Form which maketh it to be what it is, remaineth still the same. If then the Form of Man, which is his soul, remaineth the same after its separation from the body▪ as it was whiles it was copartner with the body; what difficulty is there to allow her to have the same body she had in this World, if she be built up again to a whole Man, out of the general Magazine of matter which furnished her with a body before; and which hath no this or that belonging to her, otherwise then as some form engrossing her maketh her to be this or that body? There is nothing more clear, nothing more evident, nothing▪ more rigorously true.  
FINIS.   

ERRATA.  
PAge 4. line 9 all this now, would p. 17. l. 4. are thrown out p. 24. last l. more juice, p. 36. l. 2. rather now spirit, p. 43. l. 7▪ in every parcel, p. 52. l. 10. new juice distendeth, p. 53. l. 4. grew when it was planted, p. 54. l. 18. formation, p. 67. l. 9 Salt-Peter that, p. 68 l. 18. exalted Region of, p. 90. l. 13.14. wood. Somewhat.