Page:Micrographia - or some physiological descriptions of minute bodies made by magnifying glasses with observations and inquiries thereupon.djvu/64

perse and expand it self into a vast space, if it have room enough, and infect, as it were, every part of that space. But, as on the other side, if there be but some few grains of the liquor, it may extract all the colour of the tinging substance, and may dissolve all the Salt, and thereby become much more impregnated with those substances, so may all the air that sufficed in a rarify'd state to fill some hundred thousand spaces of Æther, be compris'd in only one, but in a position proportionable dense. And though we have not yet found out such strainers for Tinctures and Salts as we have for the Air, being yet unable to separate them from their dissolving liquors by any kind of filtre, without præcipitation, as we are able to separate the Air from the Æther by Glass, and several other bodies. And though we are yet unable and ignorant of the ways of præcipitating Air out of the Æther as we can Tinctures, and Salts out of several dissolvents; yet neither of these seeming impossible from the nature of the things, nor so improbable but that some happy future industry may find out ways to effect them; nay, further, since we find that Nature does really perform (though by what means we are not certain) both these actions, namely, by præcipitating the Air in Rain and Dews, and by supplying the Streams and Rivers of the World with fresh water, strain'd through secret subterraneous Caverns: And since, that in very many other proprieties they do so exactly seem of the same nature; till further observations or tryals do inform us of the contrary, we may safely enough conclude them of the same kind. For it seldom happens that any two natures have so many properties coincident or the same, as I have observ'd Solutions and Air to have, and to be different in the rest. And therefore I think it neither impossible, irrational, nay nor difficult to be able to predict what is likely to happen in other particulars also, besides those which Observation or Experiment have declared thus or thus; especially, if the circumstances that do often very much conduce to the variation of the effects be duly weigh'd and consider'd. And indeed, were there not a probability of this, our inquiries would be endless, our tryals vain, and our greatest inventions would be nothing but the meer products of chance, and not of Reason; and, like Mariners in an Ocean, destitute both of a Compass and the sight of the Celestial guids, we might indeed, by chance, Steer directly towards our desired Port, but 'tis a thousand to one but we miss our aim. But to proceed, we may hence also give a plain reason, how the Air comes to be darkned by clouds, &c. which are nothing but a kind of precipitation, and how those precipitations fall down in Showrs. Hence also could I very easily, and I think truly, deduce the cause of the curious sixangular figures of Snow, and the appearances of Haloes, &c. and the sudden thickning of the Sky with Clouds, and the vanishing and disappearing of those Clouds again; for all these things may be very easily imitated in a glass of liquor, with some slight Chymical preparations as I have often try'd, and may somewhere else more largely relate, but have not now time to set them down. But to proceed, there are other bodies that consist of particles more Gross, and of a more apt figure for cohesion, and this requires somewhat greater agitation; such, I suppose ☿. fermented vinous