and craking of the leaves of Bays,
Holly, Laurel, &c. that their skins are very close, and do not suffer so
free a passage through them of the included juices.

But of this, and of the Experiment of the Rosemary, I shall elsewhere more
fully consider, seeming to me an extreme luciferous Experiment, such as
seems indeed very plainly to prove the _Schematism_ or structure of
Vegetables altogether _mechanical_, and as necessary, that (water and
warmth being apply'd to the bottom of the sprig of a Plant) some of it
should be carried upwards into the stem, and thence distributed into the
leaves, as that the water of the _Thames_ covering the bottom of the Mills
at the Bridge foot of _London_, and by the ebbing and flowing of it,
passing strongly by them, should have some part of it convey'd to the
Cesterns above, and thence into several houses and Cesterns up and down the
City.

* * * * *

Observ. XXXIII. _Of the _Scales_ of a _Soal_, and other Fishes._

Having hinted somewhat of the skin and covering of terrestrial Animals, I
shall next add an Observation I made on the skin and Scales of a _Soal_, a
small Fish, commonly enough known; and here in Fishes, as well as other
Animals, Nature follows its usual method, framing all parts so, as that
they are both usefull and ornamental in all its composures, mingling
_utile_ and _dulce_ together; and both these designs it seems to follow,
though our unassisted senses are not able to peceive them: This is not
onely manifest in the covering of this Fish, but in multitudes of others,
which it would be too long to enumerate, witness particularly that small
Sand Shell, which I mention'd in the XI. Observation, and infinite other
small Shells and Scales, divers of which I have view'd. This skin I view'd,
was flead from a pretty large _Soal_, and then expanded and dry'd, the
inside of it, when dry, to the naked eye, look'd very like a piece of
Canvass, but the _Microscope_ discover'd that texture to be nothing else,
but the inner ends of those curious Scolop'd Scales I, I, I, in the second
_Figure_ of the XXI. _Scheme_, namely, the part of GGGG (of the larger
representation of a single Scale, in the first _Figure_ of the same
_Scheme_) which on the back side, through an ordinary single Magnifying
Glass, look'd not unlike the Tyles on an house.

The outside of it, to the naked eye, exhibited nothing more of ornament,
save the usual order of ranging the