Likewise be form'd of Water.
We may further Take notice, that as a Plant may be nourisht, and
consequently may Consist of Common water; so may both plants and
Animals, (perhaps even from their Seminal Rudiments) consist of
compound Bodies, without having any thing meerly Elementary brought
them by nature to be compounded by them: This is evident in divers
men, who whilst they were Infants were fed only with Milk, afterwards
Live altogether upon Flesh, Fish, wine, and other perfectly mixt
Bodies. It may be seen also in sheep, who on some of our English Downs
or Plains, grow very fat by feeding upon the grasse, without scarce
drinking at all. And yet more manifestly in the magots that breed and
grow up to their full bignesse within the pulps of Apples, Pears, or
the like Fruit. We see also, that Dungs that abound with a mixt Salt
give a much more speedy increment to corn and other Vegetables than
Water alone would do: And it hath been assur'd me, by a man
experienc'd in such matters, that sometimes when to bring up roots
very early, the Mould they were planted in was made over-rich, the
very substance of the Plant has tasted of the Dung. And let us also
consider a Graft of one kind of Fruit upon the upper bough of a Tree
of another kind. As for instance, the Ciens of a Pear upon a
White-thorne; for there the ascending Liquor is already alter'd,
either by the root, or in its ascent by the bark, or both wayes, and
becomes a new mixt body: as may appear by the differing qualities to
be met with in the saps of several trees; as particularly, the
medicinal vertue of the Birch-Water (which I have sometimes drunk upon
_Helmonts_ great and not undeserved commendation) Now the graft, being
fasten'd to the stock must necessarily nourish its self, and produce
its Fruit, only out of this compound Juice prepared for it by the
Stock, being unable to come at any other aliment. And if we consider,
how much of the Vegetable he feeds upon may (as we noted above) remain
in an Animal; we may easily suppose, That the blood of that Animal who
Feeds upon this, though it be a Well constituted Liquor, and have all
the differing Corpuscles that make it up kept in order by one
praesiding form, may be a strangely Decompounded Body, many of its
parts being themselves decompounded. So little is it Necessary that
even in the mixtures which nature her self makes in Animal and
Vegetable Bodies, she should have pure Elements at hand to make her
compositions of.
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