But that putrifying animal substances may produce animals of an inferior kind, I see not any so very great a difficulty, but that one may, without much absurdity, admit: For as there may be multitudes of contrivances that go to the making up of one compleat Animate body; so, That some of those coadjutors, in the perfect existence and life of it, may be vitiated, and the life of the whole destroyed, and yet several of the constituting contrivances remain intire, I cannot think it beyond imagination or possibility; no more then that a like accidental process, as I have elswhere hinted, may also be supposed to explicate the method of Nature in the Metamorphosis of Plants. And though the difference between a Plant and an Animal be very great, yet I have not hitherto met with any so cogent an Argument, as to make me positive in affirming these two to be altogether Heterogeneous and of quite differing kinds of Nature: And besides, as there are many Zoophyts, and sensitive Plants (divers of which I have seen, which are of a middle nature, and seem to be Natures transition from one degree to another, which may be observ’d in all her other passages, wherein she is very seldom observ’d to leap from one step to another) so have we, in some Authors, Instances of Plants turning into Animals, and Animals into Plants, and the like; and some other very strange (because unheeded) proceedings of Nature; something of which kind may be met with, in the description of the Water-Gnat, though it be not altogether so direct to the present purpose.

But to refer this Discourse of Animals to their proper places, I shall add, that though one should suppose, or it should be prov’d by Observations; that several of these kinds of Plants are accidentally produc’d by a casual putrifaction, I see not any great reason to question, but that, notwithstanding its own production was as ’twere casual, yet it may germinate and produce seed, and by it propagate its own, that is, a new Species. For we do not know, but that the Omnipotent and All-wise Creator might as directly design the structure of such a Vegetable, or such an Animal to be produc’d out of such or such a putrifaction or change of this or that body, towards the constitution or structure of which, he knew it necessary, or thought it fit to make it an ingredient; as that the digestion or moderate heating of an Egg, either by the Female, or the Sun, or the heat of the Fire, or the like, should produce this or that Bird; or that Putrifactive and warm steams should, out of the blowings, as they call them, that is, the Eggs of a Flie, produce a living Magot, and that, by degrees, be turn’d into an Aurelia, and that, by a longer and a proportion’d heat, be transmuted into a Fly. Nor need we therefore to suppose it the more imperfect in its kind, then the more compounded Vegetable or Animal of which it is a part; for he might as compleatly furnish it with all kinds of contrivances necessary for its own existence, and the propagation of its own Species, and yet make it a part of a more compounded body: as a Clock-maker might make a Set of Chimes to be a part of a Clock, and yet, when the watch part or striking part are taken away, and the hindrances of its motion remov’d, this chiming part may go as accurately, and strike its tune as exactly, as if it were still a part of the compounded Automaton. So, though the original cause, or seminal principle from which this minute Plant on Rose leaves did spring; were, before the corruption caus’d by the Mill-dew, a component part of the leaf on which it grew, and did serve as a coagent in the production and constitution of it, yet might it be so consummate, as to produce a seed which might have a power of propagating the same species: the works of the Creator seeming of such an excellency, that though they are unable to help to the perfecting of the more compounded existence of the greater Plant or Animal, they may have notwithstanding an ability of acting singly upon their own internal principle, so as to produce a Vegetable body, though of a less compounded nature, and to proceed so farr in the method of other Vegetables, as to bear flowers and seeds, which may be capable of propagating the like. So that the little cases which appear to grow on the top of the slender stalks, may, for ought I know, though I should suppose them to spring from the perverting of the usual course of the parent Vegetable, contain a seed, which, being scatter’d on other leaves of the same Plant, may produce a Plant of much the same kind.

Nor are Damask-Rose leaves the onely leaves that produce these kinds of Vegetable sproutings; for I have observ’d them also in several other kinds of Rose leaves, and on the leaves of several sorts of Briers, and on Bramble leaves they are oftentimes to be found in very great clusters; so that I have found in one cluster, three, four, or five hundred of them, making a very conspicuous black spot or scab on the back side of the leaf.

Observ. [XX]. Of blue Mould, and of the first Principles of Vegetation arising from Putrefaction.

The Blue and White and several kinds of hairy mouldy spots, which are observable upon divers kinds of putrify’d bodies, whether Animal substances, or Vegetable, such as the skin, raw or dress’d, flesh, bloud, humours, milk, green Cheese, &c. or rotten sappy Wood, or Herbs, Leaves, Barks, Roots, &c. of Plants, are all of them nothing else but several kinds of small and variously figur’d Mushroms, which, from convenient materials in those putrifying bodies, are, by the concurrent heat of the Air, excited to a certain kind of vegetation, which will not be unworthy our more serious speculation and examination, as I shall by and by shew. But, first, I must premise a short description of this Specimen, which I have added of this [Schem. 12.]
Fig. 1. Tribe, in the first Figure of the XII. Scheme, which is nothing else but the appearance of a small white spot of hairy mould, multitudes of which I found to bespeck & whiten over the red covers of a small book, which, it seems, were of Sheeps skin, that being more apt to gather mould, even in a dry and clean room, then other leathers. These spots appear’d, through a good Microscope, to be a very pretty shap’d Vegetative body, which, from almost the same part of the Leather, shot out multitudes of small long cylindrical and transparent stalks, not exactly streight, but a little bended with the weight of a round and white knob that grew on the top of each of them; many of these knobs I observ’d to be very round, and of a smooth surface, such as A, A, &c. others smooth likewise, but a little oblong, as B; several of them a little broken, or cloven with chops at the top, as C; others flitter’d as ’twere, or flown all to pieces, as D, D. The whole substance of these pretty bodies was of a very tender constitution, much like the substance of the softer kind of common white Mushroms, for by touching them with a Pin, I found them to be brused and torn; they seem’d each of them to have a distinct root of their own; for though they grew neer together in a cluster, yet I could perceive each stem to rise out of a distinct part or pore of the Leather; some of these were small and short, as seeming to have been but newly sprung up, of these the balls were for the most part round, others were bigger, and taller, as being perhaps of a longer growth, and of these, for the most part, the heads were broken, and some much wasted, as E; what these heads contain’d I could not perceive; whether they were knobs and flowers, or seed cases, I am not able to say, but they seem’d most likely to be of the same nature with those that grow on Mushroms, which they did, some of them, not a little resemble.

Both their smell and taste, which are active enough to make a sensible impression upon those organs, are unpleasant and noisome.

I could not find that they would so quickly be destroy’d by the actual flame of a Candle, as at first sight of them I conceived they would be, but they remain’d intire after I had past that part of the Leather on which they stuck three or four times through the flame of a Candle; so that, it seems they are not very apt to take fire, no more then the common white Mushroms are when they are sappy.

There are a multitude of other shapes, of which these Microscopical Mushroms are figur’d, which would have been a long Work to have described, and would not have suited so well with my design in this Treatise, onely, amongst the rest, I must not forget to take notice of one that was a little like to, or resembled, a Spunge, consisting of a multitude of little Ramifications almost as that body does, which indeed seems to be a kind of Water-Mushrom, of a very pretty texture, as I else-where manifest. And a second, which I must not omit, because often mingled, and neer adjoining to these I have describ’d, and this appear’d much like a Thicket of bushes, or brambles, very much branch’d, and extended, some of them, to a great length, in proportion to their Diameter, like creeping brambles.

The manner of the growth and formation of this kind of Vegetable, is the third head of Enquiry, which, had I time, I should follow: the figure and method of Generation in this concrete seeming to me, next after the Enquiry into the formation, figuration; or chrystalization of Salts, to be the most simple, plain, and easie; and it seems to be a medium through which he must necessarily pass, that would with any likelihood investigate the forma informans of Vegetables: for as I think that he shall find it a very difficult task, who undertakes to discover the form of Saline crystallizations, without the consideration and prescience of the nature and reason of a Globular form, and as difficult to explicate this configuration of Mushroms, without the previous consideration of the form of Salts; so will the enquiry into the forms of Vegetables be no less, if not much more difficult, without the fore-knowledge of the forms of Mushroms, these several Enquiries having no less dependance one upon another then any select number of Propositions in Mathematical Elements may be made to have.