_Sunt autem cunctis permisti partibus ignes; Qui gravidas habitant fabricantes fulmina nubes: Et penetrant terras, Ætnamq; imitantur Olympo: Et calidas reddunt ipsis in fontibus undas. Ac silice in duro, viridiq; in cortice sedem Inveniunt; cum silva sibi collisa crematur. Ignibus usq; adeo natura est omnis abundans!_ Which may thus be english'd. Fire universal nature traverses. It makes the thunderbolt in tumid clouds: In dire Vulcano's penetrates the earth: And sends the boiling water from its springs. In hardest flint, and softest wood it dwells: Which by collision shows itself in flame. With fire so pregnant is all nature found! 13ly, The great question then with us, is how the surface of the earth is put into that vibratory and electric state, by heat and driness? we must needs acquit the internal of the earth from the charge of these superficial concussions. How then is the ethereal fire crouded together, or excited, so as to cause them; seeing in our ordinary electrical experiments, we make use of friction? But that friction alone does not excite electricity, we know from the obvious experiment of flint and steel, where the suddenness of the stroke, and hardness of the matter does it. Another method of exciting it, is the letting off a number of great guns, which so crouds the ethereal fire together, as to electrify glass windows; observ'd by my friend the reverend Dr. _Stephen Hales_. The _aurora borealis_, _australis_, all kind of coruscations, meteors, lightning, thunder, fire-balls are the effects, and may reciprocally be the cause of electricity; but how in particular we know not. Come we to the animal world, we must needs assert, that all motion voluntary, involuntary, generation, even life itself: all the operations of the vegetable kingdom, and an infinity more of nature's works, are owing to the activity of this electric fire, the very soul of the material world. And in my opinion, 'tis this alone, that solves the famous question, so much agitated with the writers in medicine, about the heat of the blood. How these, how earthquakes are begun, propagated, we are yet to seek.