for me as
Trypho, for he often useth coolers and binders; but that proposition,
that wine in which ivy berries have been is more inebriating, is not
true; for that disturbance which it raiseth in those that drink it is
not so properly called drunkenness as alienation of mind or madness,
such as hyoscyamus and a thousand other things that set men beside
themselves usually produce. The crookedness of the bough is no argument
at all, for such violent and unnatural effects cannot be supposed to
proceed from any natural quality or power. Now sticks are bent by the
fire, because that draws the moisture, and so the crookedness is a
violent distortion; but the natural heat nourishes and preserves the
body. Consider, therefore, whether it is not the weakness and coldness
of the body that makes it wind, bend, and creep upon the ground; for
those qualities check its rise, and depress it in its ascent, and render
it like a weak traveller, that often sits down and then goes on again.
And therefore the ivy requires something to twine about, and needs a
prop; for it is not able to sustain and direct its own branches, because
it wants heat, which naturally tends upward. The snow is melted by the
wetness of the leaf, for water destroys it easily, passing through the
thin contexture, it being nothing but a congeries of small bubbles; and
therefore in very cold but moist places the snow melts as soon as in
hot. That it is continually green doth not proceed from its heat, for to
shed its leaves doth not argue the coldness of a tree. Thus the myrtle
and well fern, though not hot, but confessedly cold, are green all
the year. Some imagine this comes from the equal and duly proportioned
mixture of the qualities in the leaf, to which Empedocles hath added a
certain aptness of pores, through which the nourishing juice is orderly
transmitted, so that there is still supply sufficient. But now it is
otherwise in trees whose leaves fall, by reason of the wideness of their
higher and narrowness of their lower pores; for the latter do not send
juice enough, nor do the former keep it, but as soon as a small stock is
received pour it out. This may be illustrated from the usual watering of
our gardens; for when the distribution is unequal, the plants that are
always watered have nourishment enough, seldom wither, and look always
green. But you further argue, that being planted in Babylon it would not
grow. It was well done of the plant, methinks, being a