es, which were
suspended to children's necks.

There have been known to be men from whose eyes there proceeded such
venomous spirits that they did harm to everybody or thing they looked
at, even to the breast of nurses, which they caused to dry up--to
plants, flowers, the leaves of trees, which were seen to wither and
fall off. They dare not enter any place till they had warned the
people beforehand to send away the children and nurses, new-born
animals, and, generally speaking, everything which they could infect
by their breath or their looks.

We should laugh, and with reason, at those who, to explain all these
singular effects, should have recourse to charms, spells, to the
operations of demons, or of good angels. The evaporation of
corpuscles, or atoms, or the insensible perspiration of the bodies
which produce all these effects, suffice to account for it. We have
recourse neither to miracles, nor to superior causes, above all when
these effects are produced near, and at a short distance; but when the
distance is great, the exhalation of the spirits, or essence, and of
insensible corpuscles, does not equally satisfy us, no more than when
we meet with things and effects which go beyond the known force of
nature, such as foretelling future events, speaking unknown languages,
_i. e._, languages unknown to the speaker, to be in such ecstasy that
the person is beyond earthly feeling, to rise up from the ground, and
remain so a long time.

The chemists demonstrate that the ____________________ or a sort of
restoration or resurrection of animals, insects, and plants, is
possible and natural. When the ashes of a plant are placed in a phial,
these ashes rise, and arrange themselves as much as they can in the
form which was first impressed on them by the Author of Nature.

Father Schol, a Jesuit, affirms that he has often seen a rose which
was made to arise from its ashes every time they wished to see it
done, by means of a little heat.

The secret of a mineral water has been found by means of which a dead
plant which has its root can be made green again, and brought to the
same state as if it were growing in the ground. Digby asserts that he
has drawn from dead animals, which were beaten and bruised in a
mortar, the representation of these animals, or other animals of the
same species.

Duchesne, a famous chemist, relates that a physician of Cracow
preserved in phials the ashes of almost every kind of plant, so that