ts, and the transmutation of them one into
another"), and is as follows:--

"518. This rule is certain, that plants for want of culture degenerate
to be baser in the same kind; and sometimes so far as to change into
another kind. 1. The standing long and not being removed maketh them
degenerate. 2. Drought unless the earth, of itself, be moist doth the
like. 3. So doth removing into worse earth, or forbearing to compost the
earth; as we see that water mint turneth into field mint, and the
colewort into rape by neglect, &c."

"525. It is certain that in very steril years corn sown will grow to
another kind:--

'Grandia saepe quibus mandavimus hordea sulcis,
Infelix lolium, et steriles dominantur avenae.'

And generally it is a rule that plants that are brought forth for
culture, as corn, will sooner change into other species, than those that
come of themselves; for that culture giveth but an adventitious nature,
which is more easily put off."

Changed conditions, according to Bacon (though he does not use these
words), appear to be "the first rule for the transmutation of plants."

"But how much value," continues M. Geoffroy, "ought to be attached to
such prophetic glimpses, when they were neither led up to, nor justified
by any serious study? They are conjectures only, which, while bearing
evidence to the boldness or rashness of those who hazarded them, remain
almost without effect upon the advance of science. Bacon excepted, they
hardly deserve to be remembered. As for De Maillet, who makes birds
spring from flying fishes, reptiles from creeping fishes, and men from
tritons, his dreams, taken in part from Anaximander, should have their
place not in the history of science, but in that of the aberrations of
the human mind."[33]

A far more forcible and pregnant passage, however, is the following,
from Sir Walter Raleigh's 'History of the World,' which Mr. Garnett has
been good enough to point out to me:--

"For mine owne opinion I find no difference but only in magnitude
between the Cat of Europe, and the Ounce of India; and even those dogges
which are become wild in Hispagniola, with which the Spaniards used to
devour the naked Indians, are now changed to Wolves, and begin to
destroy the breed of their Cattell, and doe often times teare asunder
their owne children. The common crow and rooke of India is full of red
feathers in the droun'd and low islands of Caribana, and the blackbird
and thrush hath hi