The Works of Sir Thomas Browne Volume III Part 16

As for the delights, commodities, mysteries, with other concernments of this order, we are unwilling to fly them over, in the short deliveries of _Virgil_, _Varro_, or others, and shall therefore enlarge with additionall ampliations.

By this position they had a just proportion of Earth, to supply an equality of nourishment. The distance being ordered, thick or thin, according to the magnitude or vigorous attraction of the plant, the goodnesse, leannesse, or propriety of the soyl, and therefore the rule of _Solon_, concerning the territory of _Athens_, not extendible unto all; allowing the distance of six foot unto common Trees, and nine for the Figge and Olive.

They had a due diffusion of their roots on all or both sides, whereby they maintained some proportion to their height, in Trees of large radication. For that they strictly make good their profundeur or depth unto their height, according to common conceit, and that expression of _Virgil_,[163] though confirmable from the plane Tree in _Pliny_, and some few examples, is not to be expected from the generation of Trees almost in any kinde, either of side-spreading or tap-roots: Except we measure them by lateral and opposite diffusions; nor commonly to be found in _minor_ or hearby plants; If we except Sea-holly, Liquorish, Sea-rush, and some others.

[163] Quantum vertice ad auras aethereas, tantum radice ad tartara tendit.

They had a commodious radiation in their growth; and a due expansion of their branches, for shadow or delight. For trees thickly planted, do runne up in height and branch with no expansion, shooting unequally or short, and thinne upon the neighbouring side. And therefore Trees are inwardly bare, and spring, and leaf from the outward and Sunny side of their branches.

Whereby they also avoided the perill of s????e???s?? or one tree perishing with another, as it happeneth ofttimes from the sick _effluviums_ or entanglements of the roots, falling foul with each other. Observable in Elmes set in hedges, where if one dieth the neighbouring Tree prospereth not long after.

In this situation divided into many intervals and open unto six pa.s.sages, they had the advantage of a fair perflation from windes, brushing and cleansing their surfaces; relaxing and closing their pores unto due perspiration. For that they afford large _effluviums_ perceptible from odours, diffused at great distances, is observable from Onyons out of the Earth; which though dry, and kept until the spring, as they shoot forth large and many leaves, do notably abate of their weight. And mint growing in gla.s.ses of water, until it arriveth unto the weight of an ounce, in a shady place, will sometimes exhaust a pound of water.

And as they send forth much, so may they receive somewhat in: For beside the common way and road of reception by the root, there may be a refection and imbibition from without; For gentle showrs refresh plants, though they enter not their roots; And the good and bad _effluviums_ of Vegetables, promote or debilitate each other. So _Epithymum_ and _Dodder_, rootlesse and out of the ground, maintain themselves upon Thyme, Savory, and plants, whereon they hang. And _Ivy_ divided from the root, we have observed to live some years, by the cirrous parts commonly conceived but as tenacles and holdfasts unto it. The stalks of mint cropt from the root stripped from the leaves, and set in _gla.s.ses_ with the root end upward, and out of the water, we have observed to send forth sprouts and leaves without the aid of roots, and _scordium_ to grow in like manner, the leaves set downward in water. To omit severall Sea-plants, which grow on single roots from stones, although in very many there are side-shoots _fibres_, beside the fastening root.

By this open position they were fairly exposed unto the rayes of Moon and Sunne, so considerable in the growth of Vegetables. For though Poplars, Willows, and severall Trees be made to grow about the brinks of _Acharon_, and dark habitations of the dead; Though some plants are content to grow in obscure Wells; wherein also old Elme pumps afford sometimes long bushy sprouts, not observable in any above ground: And large fields of Vegetables are able to maintain their verdure at the bottome and shady part of the Sea; yet the greatest number are not content without the actual rayes of the Sun, but bend, incline, and follow them; As large lists of solisequious and Sun-following plants.

And some observe the method of its motion in their own growth and conversion twining towards the West by the South, as Bryony, Hops, Woodbine, and several kindes of Bindeweed, which we shall more admire; when any can tell us, they observe another motion, and Twist by the North at the _Antipodes_. The same plants rooted against an erect North-wall full of holes, will finde a way through them to look upon the Sun. And in tender plants from mustard-seed, sown in the winter, and in a plot of earth placed inwardly against a South-window, the tender stalks of two leaves arose not erect, but bending towards the window, nor looking much higher then the Meridian Sun. And if the pot were turned they would work themselves into their former declinations, making their conversion by the East. That the Leaves of the Olive and some other Trees solst.i.tially turn, and precisely tell us, when the Sun is entred _Cancer_, is scarce expectable in any Climate; and _Theophrastus_ warily observes it; Yet somewhat thereof is observable in our own, in the leaves of Willows and Sallows, some weeks after the Solstice. But the great _Convolvulus_ or white-flower'd _Bindweed_ observes both motions of the Sunne, while the flower twists aequinoctionally from the left hand to the right according to the daily revolution; The stalk twineth ecliptically from the right to the left, according to the annual conversion.

Some commend the exposure of these orders unto the Western gales, as the most generative and fructifying breath of heaven. But we applaud the Husbandry of _Solomon_, whereto agreeth the doctrine of _Theophrastus_.

Arise O North-winde, and blow thou South upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out; For the North-winde closing the pores, and shutting up the _effluviums_, when the South doth after open and relax them; the Aromatical gummes do drop, and sweet odours fly actively from them. And if his garden had the same situation, which mapps and charts afford it, on the East side of _Jerusalem_, and having the wall on the West; these were the winds, unto which it was well exposed.

By this way of plantation they encreased the number of their trees, which they lost in _Quaternio's_, and square-orders, which is a commodity insisted on by _Varro_, and one great intent of nature, in this position of flowers and seeds in the elegant formation of plants, and the former Rules observed in naturall and artificiall Figurations.

Whether in this order and one Tree in some measure breaking the cold, and pinching gusts of windes from the other, trees will not better maintain their inward circles, and either escape or moderate their excentricities, may also be considered. For the circles in Trees are naturally concentricall, parallel unto the bark, and unto each other, till frost and piercing windes contract and close them on the weatherside, the opposite semi-circle widely enlarging, and at a comely distance, which hindreth oftentimes the beauty and roundnesse of Trees, and makes the Timber lesse serviceable; whiles the ascending juyce not readily pa.s.sing, settles in knots and inequalities. And therefore it is no new course of Agriculture, to observe the native position of Trees according to North and South in their transplantations.

The same is also observable underground in the circinations and sphaerical rounds of Onyons, wherein the circles of the Orbes are ofttimes larger, and the meridionall lines stand wider upon one side then the other. And where the largenesse will make up the number of planetical Orbes, that of _Luna_, and the lower planets excede the dimensions of _Saturne_, and the higher: Whether the like be not verified in the Circles of the large roots of Briony and Mandrake, or why in the knotts of Deale or Firre the Circles are often eccentrical, although not in a plane, but vertical and right position, deserves a further enquiry.

Whether there be not some irregularity of roundnesse in most plants according to their position? Whether some small compression of pores be not perceptible in parts which stand against the current of waters, as in Reeds, Bull-rushes, and other vegetables toward the streaming quarter, may also be observed, and therefore such as are long and weak, are commonly contrived into a roundnesse of figure, whereby the water presseth lesse, and slippeth more smoothly from them, and even in flags or flat-figured leaves, the greater part obvert their sharper sides unto the current in ditches.

But whether plants which float upon the surface of the water, be for the most part of cooling qualities, those which shoot above it of heating vertues, and why? whether _Sarga.s.so_ for many miles floating upon the Western Ocean, or Sea-lettuce, and Phasganium at the bottome of our Seas, make good the like qualities? Why Fenny waters afford the hottest and sweetest plants, as Calamus, Cyperus, and Crowfoot, and mudd cast out of ditches most naturally produceth Arsmart? Why plants so greedy of water so little regard oyl? Why since many seeds contain much oyl within them, they endure it not well without, either in their growth or production? Why since Seeds shoot commonly under ground, and out of the aire, those which are let fall in shallow gla.s.ses, upon the surface of the water, will sooner sprout then those at the bottom? And if the water be covered with oyle, those at the bottome will hardly sprout at all, we have not room to conjecture.

Whether Ivy would not lesse offend the Trees in this clean ordination, and well kept paths, might perhaps deserve the question. But this were a quaery only unto some habitations, and little concerning _Cyrus_ or the Babylonian territory; wherein by no industry _Harpalus_ could make Ivy grow: And _Alexander_ hardly found it about those parts to imitate the pomp of _Bacchus_. And though in these Northern Regions we are too much acquainted with one Ivy, we know too little of another, whereby we apprehend not the expressions of Antiquity, the Splenetick[164] medicine of _Galen_, and the Emphasis of the Poet, in the beauty of the white Ivy.[165]

[164] Galen. de med. secundum loc.

[165] Hedera formosior alba.

The like concerning the growth of Misseltoe, which dependeth not only of the _species_, or kinde of Tree, but much also of the Soil. And therefore common in some places, not readily found in others, frequent in _France_, not so common in _Spain_, and scarce at all in the Territory of _Ferrara_: Nor easily to be found where it is most required upon Oakes, lesse on trees continually verdant. Although in some places the Olive escapeth it not, requiting its detriment, in the delightful view of its red Berries; as _Clusius_ observed in _Spain_, and _Bellonius_ about _Hierusalem_. But this Parasitical plant suffers nothing to grow upon it, by any way of art; nor could we ever make it grow where nature had not planted it; as we have in vain attempted by inocculation and incision, upon its native or forreign stock, and though there seem nothing improbable in the seed, it hath not succeeded by sation in any manner of ground, wherein we had no reason to despair since we reade of vegetable horns [SN: Linschoten.], and how Rams horns will root about _Goa_.

But besides these rural commodities, it cannot be meanly delectable in the variety of Figures, which these orders open, and closed do make.

Whilest every inclosure makes a _Rhombus_, the figures obliquely taken a Rhomboides, the intervals bounded with parallel lines, and each intersection built upon a square, affording two Triangles or Pyramids vertically conjoyned; which in the strict Quincuncial order do oppositely make acute and blunt Angles.

And though therein we meet not with right angles, yet every Rhombus containing four Angles equal unto two right, it virtually contains two right in every one. Nor is this strange unto such as observe the natural lines of Trees, and parts disposed in them. For neither in the root doth nature affect this angle, which shooting downward for the stability of the plant, doth best effect the same by Figures of Inclination; Nor in the Branches and stalky leaves, which grow most at acute angles; as declining from their head the root, and diminishing their Angles with their alt.i.tude: Verified also in lesser Plants, whereby they better support themselves, and bear not so heavily upon the stalk: So that while near the root they often make an Angle of seventy parts, the sprouts near the top will often come short of thirty. Even in the nerves and master veines of the leaves the acute angle ruleth; the obtuse but seldome found, and in the backward part of the leaf, reflecting and arching about the stalk. But why ofttimes one side of the leaf is unequal unto the other, as in Hazell and Oaks, why on either side the master vein the lesser and derivative channels stand not directly opposite, nor at equal angles, respectively unto the adverse side, but those of one part do often exceed the other, as the Wallnut and many more, deserves another enquiry.

Now if for this order we affect coniferous and tapering Trees, particularly the Cypresse, which grows in a conical figure; we have found a tree not only of great Ornament, but in its Essentials of affinity unto this order. A solid Rhombus being made by the conversion of two Equicrural Cones, as _Archimedes_ hath defined. And these were the common Trees about _Babylon_, and the East, whereof the Ark was made; and _Alexander_ found no Trees so accommodable to build his Navy; And this we rather think to be the tree mentioned in the Canticles, which stricter Botanology will hardly allow to be Camphire.

And if delight or ornamentall view invite a comely disposure by circular amputations, as is elegantly performed in Hawthorns; then will they answer the figures made by the conversion of a Rhombus, which maketh two concentrical Circles; the greater circ.u.mference being made by the lesser angles, the lesser by the greater.

The Cylindrical figure of trees is virtually contained and latent in this order. A Cylinder or long round being made by the conversion or turning of a Parallelogram, and most handsomely by a long square, which makes an equal, strong, and lasting figure in trees, agreeable unto the body and motive parts of animals, the greatest number of Plants, and almost all roots, though their stalks be angular, and of many corners, which seem not to follow the figure of their Seeds; Since many angular Seeds send forth round stalks, and sphaericall seeds arise from angular spindles, and many rather conform unto their roots, as the round stalks of bulbous Roots, and in tuberous Roots stemmes of like figure. But why since the largest number of Plants maintain a circular Figure, there are so few with teretous or long round leaves; why coniferous Trees are tenuifolious or narrow leafed, why Plants of few or no joynts have commonly round stalks, why the greatest number of hollow stalks are round stalks; or why in this variety of angular stalks the quadrangular most exceedeth, were too long a speculation; Mean while obvious experience may finde, that in Plants of divided leaves above, nature often beginneth circularly in the two first leaves below, while in the singular plant of Ivy, she exerciseth a contrary Geometry, and beginning with angular leaves below, rounds them in the upper branches.

Nor can the rows in this order want delight, as carrying an aspect answerable unto the _dipteros hypthros_, or double order of columns open above; the opposite ranks of Trees standing like pillars in the _Cavedia_ of the Courts of famous buildings, and the _Portico's_ of the _Templa subdialia_ of old; Somewhat imitating the _Peristylia_ or Cloyster buildings, and the _Exedrae_ of the Ancients, wherein men discoursed, walked and exercised; For that they derived the rule of Columnes from trees, especially in their proportionall diminutions, is ill.u.s.trated by _Vitruvius_ from the shafts of Firre and Pine. And though the inter-arboration do imitate the _Areostylos_, or thin order, not strictly answering the proportion of intercolumniations; yet in many trees they will not exceed the intermission of the Columnes in the court of the Tabernacle; which being an hundred cubits long, and made up by twenty pillars, will afford no lesse then intervals of five cubits.

Beside, in this kinde of aspect the sight being not diffused but circ.u.mscribed between long parallels and the ?p?s??as?? and adumbration from the branches, it frameth a penthouse over the eye, and maketh a quiet vision: And therefore in diffused and open aspects, men hollow their hand above their eye, and make an artificiall brow, whereby they direct the dispersed rayes of sight, and by this shade preserve a moderate light in the chamber of the eye; keeping the _pupilla_ plump and fair, and not contracted or shrunk as in light and vagrant vision.

And therefore providence hath arched and paved the great house of the world, with colours of mediocrity, that is, blew and green, above and below the sight, moderately terminating the _acies_ of the eye. For most plants, though green above-ground, maintain their original white below it, according to the candour of their seminall pulp, and the rudimental leaves do first appear in that colour; observable in Seeds sprouting in water upon their first foliation. Green seeming to be the first supervenient, or above-ground complexion of Vegetables, separable in many upon ligature or inhumation, as Succory, Endive, Artichoaks, and which is also lost upon fading in the Autumn.

And this is also agreeable unto water it self, the alimental vehicle of plants, which first altereth into this colour; And containing many vegetable seminalities, revealeth their Seeds by greennesse; and therefore soonest expected in rain or standing water, not easily found in distilled or water strongly boiled; wherein the seeds are extinguished by fire and decoction, and therefore last long and pure without such alteration, affording neither uliginous coats, gnatworms, Acari, hairworms, like crude and common water; And therefore most fit for wholsome beverage, and with malt makes Ale and Beer without boyling.

What large water-drinkers some Plants are, the Canary-tree and Birches in some Northern Countries, drenching the fields about them do sufficiently demonstrate. How water it self is able to maintain the growth of Vegetables, and without extinction of their generative or medicall vertues; Beside the experiment of _Helmonts_ tree, we have found in some which have lived six years in gla.s.ses. The seeds of Scurvy-gra.s.se growing in water-pots, have been fruitful in the Land; and _Asarum_ after a years s.p.a.ce, and once casting its leaves in water in the second leaves, hath handsomely performed its vomiting operation.

Nor are only dark and green colours, but shades and shadows contrived through the great Volume of nature, and trees ordained not only to protect and shadow others, but by their shades and shadowing parts, to preserve and cherish themselves. The whole radiation or branchings shadowing the stock and the root, the leaves, the branches and fruit, too much exposed to the windes and scorching Sunne. The calicular leaves inclose the tender flowers, and the flowers themselves lye wrapt about the seeds, in their rudiment and first formations, which being advanced the flowers fall away; and are therefore contrived in variety of Figures, best satisfying the intention; Handsomely observable in hooded and gaping flowers, and the b.u.t.terfly bloomes of leguminous plants, the lower leaf closely involving the rudimental Cod, and the alary or wingy divisions embracing or hanging over it.

But Seeds themselves do lie in perpetual shades, either under the leaf, or shut up in coverings; and such as lye barest, have their husks, skins, and pulps about them, wherein the nebbe and generative particle lyeth moist and secured from the injury of Aire and Sunne. Darknesse and light hold interchangeable dominions, and alternately rule the seminal state of things. Light unto _Pluto_[166] is darknesse unto _Jupiter_.

Legions of seminall _Idaea's_ lye in their second Chaos and _Orcus_ of _Hippocrates_; till putting on the habits of their forms, they shew themselves upon the stage of the world, and open dominion of _Jove_.

They that held the Stars of heaven were but rayes and flashing glimpses of the Empyreall light, through holes and perforations of the upper heaven, took of the natural shadows of stars, while according to better discovery the poor Inhabitants of the Moon[167] have but a polary life, and must pa.s.se half their dayes in the shadow of that Luminary.

[166] Lux orco, tenebrae Jovi, tenebrae orco, lux Jovi. _Hippocr._ de diaeta.

[167] S. Hevelii Selenographia.

Light that makes things seen, makes some things invisible, were it not for darknesse and the shadow of the earth, the n.o.blest part of the Creation had remained unseen, and the Stars in heaven as invisible as on the fourth day, when they were created above the Horizon, with the Sun, or there was not an eye to behold them. The greatest mystery of Religion is expressed by adumbration, and in the n.o.blest part of Jewish Types, we finde the Cherubims shadowing the Mercy-seat: Life it self is but the shadow of death, and souls departed but the shadows of the living: All things fall under this name. The Sunne it self is but the dark _simulachrum_, and light but the shadow of G.o.d.

Lastly, It is no wonder that this Quincunciall order was first and still affected as gratefull unto the Eye: For all things are seen Quincuncially; For at the eye the Pyramidal rayes from the object, receive a decussation, and so strike a second base upon the _Retina_ or hinder coat, the proper organ of Vision; wherein the pictures from objects are represented, answerable to the paper, or wall in the dark chamber; after the decussation of the rayes at the hole of the h.o.r.n.ycoat, and their refraction upon the Christalline humour, answering the _foramen_ of the window, and the _convex_ or burning-gla.s.ses, which refract the rayes that enter it. And if ancient Anatomy would hold, a like disposure there was of the optick or visual nerves in the brain, wherein Antiquity conceived a concurrence by decussation. And this not only observable in the Laws of direct Vision, but in some part also verified in the reflected rayes of sight. For making the angle of incidence equal to that of reflexion, the visuall ray returneth Quincuncially, and after the form of a V, and the line of reflexion being continued unto the place of vision, there ariseth a semi-decussation which makes the object seen in a perpendicular unto it self, and as farre below the reflectent, as it is from it above, observable in the Sun and Moon beheld in water.

And this is also the law of reflexion in moved bodies and sounds, which though not made by decussation, observe the rule of equality between incidence and reflexion; whereby whispering places are framed by Elliptical arches laid side-wise; where the voice being delivered at the _focus_ of one extremity, observing an equality unto the angle of incidence, it will reflect unto the _focus_ of the other end, and so escape the ears of the standers in the middle.

A like rule is observed in the reflection of the vocall and sonorous line in Ecchoes, which cannot therefore be heard in all stations. But hapning in woody plantations, by waters, and able to return some words; if reacht by a pleasant and well-dividing voice, there may be heard the softest notes in nature.

And this not only verified in the way of sense, but in animall and intellectual receptions. Things entring upon the intellect by a Pyramid from without, and thence into the memory by another from within, the common decussation being in the understanding as is delivered by _Bovillus_.[168] Whether the intellectual and phantastical lines be not thus rightly disposed, but magnified, diminished, distorted, and ill placed in the Mathematicks of some brains, whereby they have irregular apprehensions of things, perverted notions, conceptions, and incurable hallucinations, were no unpleasant speculation.

[168] Car. Bovillus de intellectu.

And if aegyptian Philosophy may obtain, the scale of influences was thus disposed, and the geniall spirits of both worlds, do trace their way in ascending and descending Pyramids, mystically apprehended in the Letter X, and the open Bill and stradling Legges of a Stork, which was imitated by that Character.

Of this Figure _Plato_ made choice to ill.u.s.trate the motion of the soul, both of the world and man; while he delivered that G.o.d divided the whole conjunction length-wise, according to figure of a Greek X, and then turning it about reflected it into a circle; By the circle implying the uniform motion of the first Orb, and by the right lines, the planetical and various motions within it. And this also with application unto the soul of man, which hath a double aspect, one right, whereby it beholdeth the body, and objects without; another circular and reciprocal, whereby it beholdeth it self. The circle declaring the motion of the indivisible soul, simple, according to the divinity of its nature, and returning into it self; the right lines respecting the motion pertaining unto sense, and vegetation, and the central decussation, the wonderous connexion of the severall faculties conjointly in one substance. And so conjoyned the unity and duality of the soul, and made out the three substances so much considered by him; That is, the indivisible or divine, the divisible or corporeal, and that third, which was the _Systasis_ or harmony of those two, in the mystical decussation.

And if that were clearly made out which _Justin Martyr_ took for granted, this figure hath had the honour to characterise and notifie our blessed Saviour, as he delivereth in that borrowed expression from _Plato: Decussavit eum in universo_, the hint whereof he would have _Plato_ derive from the figure of the brazen Serpent, and to have mistaken the Letter X for T, whereas it is not improbable, he learned these and other mystical expressions in his Learned Observations of aegypt, where he might obviously behold the Mercurial characters, the handed crosses, and other mysteries not throughly understood in the sacred Letter X, which being derivative from the Stork, one of the ten sacred animals, might be originally aegyptian, and brought into _Greece_ by _Cadmus_ of that Countrey.

CHAPTER V

To enlarge this contemplation unto all the mysteries and secrets, accommodable unto this number, were inexcusable Pythagorisme, yet cannot omit the ancient conceit of five surnamed the number of justice[169]; as justly dividing between the digits, and hanging in the centre of Nine, described by square numeration, which angularly divided will make the decussated number; and so agreeable unto the Quincunciall Ordination, and rowes divided by Equality, and just _decorum_, in the whole complantation; And might be the Originall of that common game among us, wherein the fifth place is Soveraigne, and carrieth the chief intention.

The Ancients wisely instructing youth, even in their recreations unto virtue, that is, early to drive at the middle point and Central Seat of justice.

[169] d???