Whether this Plant does sometimes originally spring or rise out of
corruption, without any disseminated seed, I have not yet made trials
enough to be very much, either positive or negative; for as it seems very
hard to conceive how the seed should be generally dispers'd into all parts
where there is a corruption begun, unless we may rationally suppose, that
this seed being so exceeding small, and consequently exceeding light, is
thereby taken up, and carried to and fro in the Air into every place, and
by the falling drops of rain is wash'd down out of it, and so dispers'd
into all places, and there onely takes root and propagates, where it finds
a convenient soil or matrix for it to thrive in; so if we will have it to
proceed from corruption, it is not less difficult to conceive,
First, how the corruption of any Vegetable, much less of any Stone or
Brick, should be the Parent of so curiously figur'd, and so perfect a Plant
as this is. But here indeed, I cannot but add, that it seems rather to be a
product of the Rain in those bodies where it is stay'd, then of the very
bodies themselves, since I have found it growing on Marble, and Flint, but
always the _Microscope_, if not the naked eye, would discover some little
hole of Dirt in which it was rooted.
Next, how the corruption of each of those exceedingly differing bodies
should all conspire to the production of the same Plant, that is, that
Stones, Bricks, Wood, or vegetable substances, and Bones, Leather, Horns,
or animate substances, unless we may with some plausibleness say, that Air
and Water are the coadjutors, or _menstruums_, all kinds of
_putrifactions_, and that thereby the bodies (though whil'st they retain'd
their substantial forms, were of exceeding differing natures, yet) since
they are dissolv'd and mixt into another, they may be very _Homogeneous_,
they being almost resolv'd again into Air, Water, and Earth; retaining,
perhaps, one part of their vegetative faculty yet entire, which meeting
with congruous assistants, such as the heat of the Air, and the fluidity of
the Water, and such like coadjutors and conveniences, acquires a certain
vegetation for a time, wholly differing perhaps from that kind of
vegetation it had before.
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