[CHAPTER III]
Now although this elegant ordination of vegetables, hath found coincidence or imitation in sundry works of Art, yet is it not also destitute of natural examples, and though overlooked by all, was elegantly observable, in severall works of nature.
Could we satisfie our selves in the position of the lights above, or discover the wisedom of that order so invariably maintained in the fixed Stars of heaven; Could we have any light, why the stellary part of the first masse, separated into this order, that the Girdle of Orion should ever maintain its line, and the two Stars in Charles’s Wain never leave pointing at the Pole-Starre, we might abate the Pythagoricall Musick of the Spheres, the sevenfold Pipe of Pan; and the strange Cryptography of Gaffarell in his Starrie Book of Heaven.
But not to look so high as Heaven or the single Quincunx of the Hyades upon the neck of Taurus, the Triangle, and remarkable Crusero about the foot of the Centaur; observable rudiments there are hereof in subterraneous concretions, and bodies in the Earth; in the Gypsum or Talcum Rhomboides, in the Favaginites or honey-comb-stone, in the Asteria and Astroites, and in the crucigerous stone of S. Iago of Gallicia.
The same is observably effected in the Julus, Catkins, or pendulous excrescencies of severall Trees, of Wallnuts, Alders, and Hazels, which hanging all the Winter, and maintaining their Net-work close, by the expansion thereof are the early foretellers of the spring, discoverable also in long Pepper, and elegantly in the Julus of Calamus Aromaticus, so plentifully growing with us in the first palms of Willowes, and in the flowers of Sycamore, Petasites, Asphodelus, and Blattaria, before explication. After such order stand the flowery Branches in our best spread Verbascum, and the seeds about the spicous head or torch of Tapsus Barbatus, in as fair a regularity as the circular and wreathed order will admit, which advanceth one side of the square, and makes the same Rhomboidall.
In the squamous heads of Scabious, Knapweed, and the elegant Jacea Pinea, and in the Scaly composure of the Oak-Rose,[148] which some years most aboundeth. After this order hath Nature planted the Leaves in the Head of the common and prickled Artichoak: wherein the black and shining Flies do shelter themselves, when they retire from the purple Flower about it; The same is also found in the pricks, sockets, and impressions of the seeds, in the pulp or bottome thereof; wherein do elegantly stick the Fathers of their Mother. To omit the Quincunciall Specks on the top of the Miscle-berry, especially that which grows upon the Tilia or Lime-Tree. And the remarkable disposure of those yellow fringes about the purple Pestill of Aaron, and elegant clusters of Dragons, so peculiarly secured by nature, with an umbrella or skreening Leaf about them.
The Spongy leaves of some Sea-wracks, Fucus, Oaks, in their several kindes, found about the shoar,[149] with ejectments of the Sea, are overwrought with Net-workEspecially the porus cervinus Imperati, Sporosa, Alga πλατυκέρως. Bauhini. elegantly containing this order, which plainly declareth the naturality of this texture; And how the needle of nature delighteth to work, even in low and doubtful vegetations.