Chap I.—Of three hindes of mixtures or compounds, of the which I must intreate in this Historic

Having intreated in the former booke of that which concernes the Elements, and the simples of the Indies, in this present booke we will discourse of mixtures and compounds, seeming fit for the subject we shall treate of. And although there be many other sundrie kindes, yet we will reduce this matter into three, which are Mettalls, Plants, and Beasts. Mettalls are (as plants) hidden and buried in the bowels of the earth, which have some conformitie in themselves, in the forme and maner of their production; for that wee see and discover even in them, branches, and as it were a bodie, from whence they grow and proceede, which are the greater veines and the lesse, so as they have a knitting in themselves : and it seemes properly that these minerales grow like vnto plants, not that they have any inward vegitative life, being onely proper to plants : but they are engendered in the bowels of the earth, by the vertue and force of the Sunne and other planets, and in long continuance of time they increase and multiply after the manner of plants. And even as mettalls be plants hidden in the earth, so we may say, that plants be living creatures fixed in one place, whose life is maintained by the nourishment which Nature furnisheth from their first beginning.