Nor do I imagine that the skips from the one to another will be found very great, if beginning from fluidity, or body without any form, we descend gradually, till we arrive at the highest form of a bruite Animal’s Soul, making the steps or foundations of our Enquiry, Fluidity, Orbiculation, Fixation, Angulization, or Crystallization Germination or Ebullition, Vegetation, Plantanimation, Animation, Sensation, Imagination.
Now, that we may the better proceed in our Enquiry, It will be requisite to consider:
First, that Mould and Mushroms require no seminal property, but the former may be produc’d at any time from any kind of putrifying Animal, or Vegetable Substance, as Flesh, &c. kept moist and warm, and the latter, if what Mathiolus relates be true, of making them by Art, are as much within our command, of which Matter take the Epitomie which Mr. Parkinson has deliver’d in his Herbal, in his Chapter of Mushroms, because I have not Mathiolus now by me: Unto these Mushroms (saith he) may also be adjoyn’d those which are made of Art (whereof Mathiolus makes mention) that grow naturally among certain stones in Naples, and that the stones being digg’d up, and carried to Rome, and other places, where they set them in their Wine Cellars, covering them with a little Earth, and sprinkling a little warm water thereon, would within four days produce Mushroms fit to be eaten, at what time one will: As also that Mushroms may be made to grow at the foot of a wilde Poplar Tree, within four days after, warm water wherein some leaves have been dissolv’d shall be pour’d into the Root (which must be slit) and the stock above ground.
Next, that as Mushroms may be generated without seed, so does it not appear that they have any such thing as seed in any part of them; for having considered several kinds of them, I could never find any thing in them that I could with any probability ghess to be the seed of it, so that it does not as yet appear (that I know of) that Mushroms may be generated from a seed, but they rather seem to depend merely upon a convenient constitution of the matter out of which they are made, and a concurrence of either natural or artificial heat.
Thirdly, that by several bodies (as Salts and Metals both in Water and in the air, and by several kinds of sublimations in the Air) actuated and guided with a congruous heat, there may be produc’d several kinds of bodies as curiously, if not of a more compos’d Figure; several kinds of rising or Ebulliating Figures seem to manifest; as witness the shooting in the Rectification of spirits of Urine, Hart-horn, Bloud, &c. witness also the curious branches of evaporated dissolutions, some of them against the sides of the containing Jar: others standing up, or growing an end, out of the bottom, of which I have taken notice of a very great variety. But above all the rest, it is a very pretty kind of Germination which is afforded us in the Silver Tree, the manner of making which with Mercury and Silver, is well known to the Chymists, in which there is an Ebullition or Germination, very much like this of Mushroms, if I have been rightly inform’d of it.
Fourthly, I have very often taken notice of, and also observ’d with a Microscope, certain excrescencies or Ebullitions in the snuff of a Candle, which, partly from the sticking of the smoaky particles as they are carryed upwards by the current of the rarify’d Air and flame, and partly also from a kind of Germination or Ebullition of some actuated unctuous parts which creep along and filter through some small string of the Week, are formed into pretty round and uniform heads, very much resembling the form of hooded Mushroms, which, being by any means expos’d to the fresh Air, or that air which encompasses the flame, they are presently lick’d up and devour’d by it, and vanish.
The reason of which Phænomenon seems to me, to be no other then this:
That when a convenient thread of the Week is so bent out by the sides of the snuff that are about half an Inch or more, remov’d above the bottom, or lowest part of the flame, and that this part be wholly included in the flame; the Oyl (for the reason of filtration, which I have elsewhere rendred) being continualy driven up the snuff is driven likewise into this ragged bended-end, and this being remov’d a good distance, as half an Inch or more, above the bottom of the flame, the parts of the air that passes by it, are already, almost satiated with the dissolution of the boiling unctuous steams that issued out below, and therefore are not onely glutted, that is, can dissolve no more then what they are already acting upon, but they carry up with them abundance of unctuous and sooty particles, which meeting with that rag of the Week, that is plentifully fill’d with Oyl, and onely spends it as fast as it evaporates, and not at all by dissolution or burning, by means of these steamy parts of the filtrated Oyl issuing out at the sides of this ragg, and being inclos’d with an air that is already satiated and cannot prey upon them nor burn them, the ascending sooty particles are stay’d about it and fix’d, so as that about the end of that ragg or filament of the snuff, whence the greatest part of the steams issue, there is conglobated or fix’d a round and pretty uniform cap, much resembling the head of a Mushrom, which, if it be of any great bigness, you may observe that its underside will be bigger then that which is above the ragg or stem of it; for the Oyl that is brought into it by filtration, being by the bulk of the cap a little shelter’d from the heat of the flame, does by that means issue as much out beneath from the stalk or downwards, as it does upwards, and by reason of the great access of the adventitious smoak from beneath, it increases most that way. That this may be the true reason of this Phænomenon, I could produce many Arguments and Experiments to make it probable: As,
First, that the Filtration carries the Oyl to the top of the Week, at least as high as these raggs, is visible to one that will observe the snuff of a burning Candle with a Microscope, where he may see an Ebullition or bubbling of the Oyl, as high as the snuff looks black.
Next, that it does steam away more then burn; I could tell you of the dim burning of a Candle, the longer the snuff be which arises from the abundance of vapours out of the higher parts of it.