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
transparent body. On the one hand it flows, slips, and runs away;
and on the other it assumes all the forms of the bodies that
surround it, having properly none of its own. If water were more
rarefied, or thinner, it would be a kind of air; and so the whole
surface of the earth would be dry and sterile. There would be none
but volatiles; no living creature could swim; no fish could live;
nor would there be any traffic by navigation. What industrious and
sagacious hand has found means to thicken the water, by subtilising
the air, and so well to distinguish those two sorts of fluid bodies?
If water were somewhat more rarefied, it could no longer sustain
those prodigious floating buildings, called ships. Bodies that have
the least ponderosity would presently sink under water. Who is it
that took care to frame so just a configuration of parts, and so
exact a degree of motion, as to make water so fluid, so penetrating,
so slippery, so incapable of any consistency: and yet so strong to
bear, and so impetuous to carry off and waft away, the most unwieldy
bodies? It is docile; man leads it about as a rider does a well-
managed horse. He distributes it as he pleases; he raises