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.

To explain my meaning a little better by a gross Similitude:

Suppose a curious piece of Clock-work, that had had several motions and
contrivances in it, which, when in order, would all have mov'd in their
design'd methods and Periods. We will further suppose, by some means, that
this Clock comes to be broken, brused, or otherwise disordered, so that
several parts of it being dislocated, are impeded, and so stand still, and
not onely hinder its own progressive motion, and produce not the effect
which they were design'd for, but because the other parts also have a
dependence upon them, put a stop to their motion likewise; and so the whole
Instrument becomes unserviceable,, and not fit for any use. This Instrument
afterwards, by some shaking and tumbling, and throwing up and down, comes
to have several of its parts shaken out, and several of its curious
motions, and contrivances, and particles all fallen asunder; here a Pin
falls out, and there a Pillar, and here a Wheel, and there a Hammer, and a
Spring, and the like, and among the rest, away falls those parts also which
were brused and disorder'd, and had all this while impeded the motion of
all the rest; hereupon several of those other motions that yet remain,
whole springs were not quite run down, being now at liberty, begin each of
them to move, thus or thus, but quite after another method then before,
there being many regulating parts and the like, fallen away and lost. Upon
this, the Owner, who chances to hear and observe some of these effects,
being ignorant of the Watch-makers Art, wonders what is betid his Clock,
and presently imagines that some Artist has been at work, and has set his
Clock in order, and made a new kind of Instrument of it, but upon examining
circumstances, he finds there was no such matter, but that the casual
slipping out of a Pin had made several parts of his Clock fall to pieces,
and that thereby the obstacle that all this while hindred his Clock,
together with other usefull parts were fallen out, and so his Clock was set
at liberty. And upon winding up those springs again when run down, he finds
h