Yet there are divers sorts of salt, that have different properties and vertues, according to the things from which they are extracted; for salt retains a propriety of the thing from whence it came, saith _Geber_ in his Testament, yea as many odors, and sapors as there are, they all do depend upon salt; for where there is no salt, there is no smell nor tast; and yet of all the tasts which _Plutarch_ in his Naturall causes doth limit to eight, _Plinie lib._ 15. _cap._ 27. extends them to 13. there is not one, that is not salt, because tast (as _Plato_ will have it) comes from water, which creep athwart the stalk of every plant, and keeps the saltness that it cannot passe as it is more grosse and terrestriall, as wee see in sea-water when it is distilled; where when they passe it through sand, where it leaves its saltnesse. But it may be said to _Plato_, that the tast doth not only ly in plants, but also in Animalls and mineralls, and all other compounded Elements. It is that which he and _Aristotle_ and other rationall Philosophers, are only satisfied with, that which their arguments and discourse do imprint in their phantasies: esteeming that it cannot be otherwise, then that which their reasons do demonstrate unto them, for the most part false and erroneous; there were if they would penetrate empirickly by the experiments, they might have been shewed by the finger of the eye, the truth of the thing, they might have been better ascertained therein, as the _Arabians_ have since done; and the Chymicall Philosophers, who will assure themselves of nothing, but what they have oftentimes tried without variation to the sense. It is a maxime of all Naturalists, received for Infallible, that the transparence comes from this, when the water in the composition and mixtion superabounds, over the earth, and darkenesse on the contrary, when Terrestreity predominates the water, and it would be accounted an irremissible crime _Læsæ Majestatis_ to doubt thereof, for who is there that doubteth it, will they say, that it is not so? I will reply that it is I, to whom experience shewes the contrary, at least for that the cause of transparence, and opacity, doth not proceed from that which they alledge. Take Crystall and passe it never so little through hot ashes, so long as one would rost a chestnut you wil find it all dark, without any more transparence within or without in the superficies, and that without any losse of its substance, or diminution of its weight. And on the contrary in a strong expression of fire blowing upon the lead, then which nothing can be darker, it will convert into a forme of a hyacinth so transparent, that one may read a small letter through it; though it were an inch thick, and this hyacinth by the same fire returne into lead, and lead into an hyacinth.