egetables, to receive
the nutrition, pabulum, and food, of which this of water as well as air,
are the proper vehicles, insinuating what they carry into the numerous
pores, and through the tubes, canales, and other emulgent passages and
percolutions to the several vessels, where (as in a stomach) it is
elaborated, concocted, and digested, for distribution through every
part of the plant; and therefore had need be such as should feed, not
starve, infect or corrupt; which depends upon the nature and quality of
the mix'd, with what other virtue, spirit, mineral, or other particles,
accompanying the purest springs, (to appearance) passing through the
closest strainers. This therefore requires due examination, and
sometimes exposure to the air and sun, and accordingly the crudity, and
other defects taken off and qualified: All which, rain-water, that has
had its natural circulation, is greatly free from, so it meets with no
noxious vapours in the descent, as it must do passing through fuliginous
clouds of smoak and soot, over and about great cities, and other
vulcanos, continually vomiting out their acrimonious, and sometimes
pestiferous fervor, infecting the ambient air, as it perpetually does
about London, and for many adjacent miles, as I have elsewhere{9:1}
shew'd.

In the mean time, whether water alone is the cause of the solid and
bulky part, and consequently of the augmentation of trees and plants,
without any thing more to do with that element (tho' as it serves to
transport some other matter) is very ingenuously discuss'd, and
curiously enquired into by Dr. _Woodward_, in his _History of the
Earth_; fortified with divers nice experiments, too large to be here
inserted: The sum is, that water, be it of rain, or the river (superior
or inferior) carries with it a certain superfine terrestrial matter, not
destitute of vegetative particles; which gives body, substance, and all
other requisites to the growth and perfection of the plant, with the aid
of that due heat which gives life and motion to the vehicles passage
through all the parts of the vegetable, continually ascending, 'till
(having sufficiently saturated them) it transpires the rest of the
liquid at the summity and tops of the branches into the atmosphere, and
leaving some of the less refined matter in a viscid hony-dew, or other
exsudations, (often perceived on the leaves and blossoms,) anon
descending and joining again with what they meet, repeat this course