Note 12 — CHAP. III. Of Pasture of Plants.
Reading edition
As to the Fineness of the Pabulum of Plants, ’tis not unlikely, that Roots may insume no grosser Particles, than those on which the Colours of Bodies depend; but to discover the greatest of those Corpuscles, Sir Isaac Newton thinks, it will require a Microscope, that with sufficient Distinctness can represent Objects Five or Six hundred times bigger, than at a Foot Distance they appear to the naked Eye.
My Microscope indeed is but a very ordinary one, and when I view with it the Liquor newly imbibed by a fibrous Root of a Mint, it seems more limpid than the clearest common Water, nothing at all appearing in it.
[13]Either Roots must insume the Earth, that is their Pabulum, as they find it in whole Pieces, having intire Superficies of their own, or else such Particles as have not intire Superficies of their own, but want some Part of it, which adheres to, or is Part of the Superficies of larger Particles, before they are separated by Roots. The former they cannot insume (unless contained in Water); because they would fly away at the first Pores that were open: Ergo they must insume the latter.