We may further Take notice, that as a Plant may be nourisht, and consequently may Consist of Common water; so may both plants and Animals, (perhaps even from their Seminal Rudiments) consist of compound Bodies, without having any thing meerly Elementary brought them by nature to be compounded by them: This is evident in divers men, who whilst they were Infants were fed only with Milk, afterwards Live altogether upon Flesh, Fish, wine, and other perfectly mixt Bodies. It may be seen also in sheep, who on some of our English Downs or Plains, grow very fat by feeding upon the grasse, without scarce drinking at all. And yet more manifestly in the magots that breed and grow up to their full bignesse within the pulps of Apples, Pears, or the like Fruit. We see also, that Dungs that abound with a mixt Salt give a much more speedy increment to corn and other Vegetables than Water alone would do: And it hath been assur'd me, by a man experienc'd in such matters, that sometimes when to bring up roots very early, the Mould they were planted in was made over-rich, the very substance of the Plant has tasted of the Dung. And let us also consider a Graft of one kind of Fruit upon the upper bough of a Tree of another kind. As for instance, the Ciens of a Pear upon a White-thorne; for there the ascending Liquor is already alter'd, either by the root, or in its ascent by the bark, or both wayes, and becomes a new mixt body: as may appear by the differing qualities to be met with in the saps of several trees; as particularly, the medicinal vertue of the Birch-Water (which I have sometimes drunk upon _Helmonts_ great and not undeserved commendation) Now the graft, being fasten'd to the stock must necessarily nourish its self, and produce its Fruit, only out of this compound Juice prepared for it by the Stock, being unable to come at any other aliment. And if we consider, how much of the Vegetable he feeds upon may (as we noted above) remain in an Animal; we may easily suppose, That the blood of that Animal who Feeds upon this, though it be a Well constituted Liquor, and have all the differing Corpuscles that make it up kept in order by one praesiding form, may be a strangely Decompounded Body, many of its parts being themselves decompounded. So little is it Necessary that even in the mixtures which nature her self makes in Animal and Vegetable Bodies, she should have pure Elements at hand to make her compositions of. Having said thus much touching the constitution of Plants and Animals, I might perhaps be able to say as much touching that of Minerals, and even Metalls, if it were as easy for us to make experiment in Order to the production of these, as of those. But the growth or increment of Minerals being usually a work of excessively long time, and for the most part perform'd in the bowels of the Earth, where we cannot see it, I must instead of Experiments make use, on this occasion, of Observations.