Understood, and others of them being not altogether Unobnoxious to Exceptions, I think you have singl'd out the Principal and less Questionable Experiment when you lately mention'd that of the Willow Tree. And having thus, Continues _Eleutherius_, to Answer your Question, given you a Summary Account of what I am Confident You know better then I do, I shall be very glad to receive Your Sence of it, if the giving it me will not too much Divert You from the Prosecution of your Discourse. That _If_ (replies _Carneades_) was not needlessly annex'd: for thorowly to examine such an Hypothesis and such Arguments would require so many Considerations, and Consequently so much time, that I should not now have the Liesure [Errata: leasure] to perfect such a Digression, and much less to finish my Principle [Errata: principal] Discourse. Yet thus much I shall tell You at present, that you need not fear my rejecting this Opinion for its Novelty; since, however the _Helmontians_ may in complement to their Master pretend it to be a new Discovery, Yet though the Arguments be for the most part his, the Opinion it self is very Antient: For _Diogenes Laertius_ and divers other Authors speak of _Thales_, as the first among the _Graecians_ that made disquisitions upon nature. And of this _Thales_, I Remember, _Tully_[5] informes us, that he taught all things were at first made of Water. And it seems by _Plutarch_ and _Justin Martyr_, that the Opinion was Ancienter then he: For they tell us that he us'd to defend his Tenet by the Testimony of _Homer_. And a Greek Author, (the _Scholiast_ of _Apollonius_) upon these Words [Greek: Ex iliou [Transcriber's Note: iluos] eblastese chthon aute],[6] _The Earth of Slime was made,_ Affirms (out of _Zeno_) that the _Chaos_, whereof all things were made, was, according to _Hesiod_, Water; which, settling first, became Slime, and then condens'd into solid Earth. And the same Opinion about the Generation of Slime seems to have been entertain'd by _Orpheus_, out of whom one of the Antients[7] cites this Testimony, [Greek: Ek tou hydatos ilui katiste.] _Of Water Slime was made._ [Footnote 5: De Natura Deorum.] [Footnote 6: Argonaut. 4.] [Footnote 7: Athenagoras.]