Admire the plants that spring from the earth: they yield food for
the healthy, and remedies for the sick. Their species and virtues
are innumerable. They deck the earth, yield verdure, fragrant
flowers, and delicious fruits. Do you see those vast forests that
seem as old as the world? Those trees sink into the earth by their
roots, as deep as their branches shoot up to the sky. Their roots
defend them against the winds, and fetch up, as it were by
subterranean pipes, all the juices destined to feed the trunk. The
trunk itself is covered with a tough bark that shelters the tender
wood from the injuries of the air. The branches distribute by
several pipes the sap which the roots had gathered up in the trunk.
In summer the boughs protect us with their shadow against the
scorching rays of the sun. In winter, they feed the fire that
preserves in us natural heat. Nor is burning the only use wood is
fit for; it is a soft though solid and durable matter, to which the
hand of man gives, with ease, all the forms he pleases for the
greatest works of architecture and navigation. Moreover, fruit
trees by bending their boughs towards the earth seem to offer their
crop to man. The trees and plants, by letting their fruit or seed
drop down, provide for a numerous posterity about them. The
tenderest plant, the least of herbs and pulse are, in little, in a
small seed, all that is displayed in the highest plants and largest
tree. Earth that never changes produces all those alterations in
her bosom.


SECT. XIII. Of Water.


Let us now behold what we call water. It is a liquid, clear, and