I observ’d likewise, that the shootings of Ice on the top of Water, beginning to freez, were in streight prismatical bodies much like those of roch-peter, that they crost each other usually without any kind of order or rule, that they were always a little higher then the surface of the Water that lay between them; that by degrees those interjacent spaces would be fill’d with Ice also, which usually would be as high as the surface of the rest.

In flakes of Ice that had been frozen on the top of Water to any considerable thickness, I observ’d that both the upper and the under sides of it were curiously quill’d, furrow’d, or grain’d, as it were, which when the Sun shone on the Plate, was exceeding easily to be perceiv’d to be much after the shape of the lines in the 6. Figure of the 8. Scheme, that is, they consisted of several streight ends of parallel Plates, which were of divers lengths and angles to one another without any certain order.

The cause of all which regular Figures (and of hundreds of others, namely of Salts, Minerals, Metals, &c. which I could have here inserted, would it not have been too long) seems to be deducible from the same Principles, which I have (in the 13. Observation) hinted only, having not yet had time to compleat a Theory of them.  But indeed (which I there also hinted) I judge it the second step by which the Pyramid of natural knowledge (which is the knowledge of the form of bodies) is to be ascended:  And whosoever will climb it, must be well furnish’d with that which the Noble Verulam calls Scalam Intellectus; he must have scaling Ladders, otherwise the steps are so large and high, there will be no getting up them, and consequently little hopes of attaining any higher station, such as to the knowledge of the most simple principle of Vegetation manifested in Mould and Mushromes, which, as I elsewhere endeavoured to shew, seems to be the third step; for it seems to me, that the Intellect of man is like his body, destitute of wings, and cannot move from a lower to a higher and more sublime station of knowledg, otherwise then step by step, nay even there where the way is prepar’d and already made passible; as in the Elements of Geometry, or the like, where it is fain to climb a whole series of Propositions by degrees, before it attains the knowledge of one Probleme.  But if the ascent be high, difficult and above its reach, it must have recourse to a novum organum, some new engine and contrivance, some new kind of Algebra, or Analytick Art before it can surmount it.

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Observ.  XV. Of Kettering-stone_, and of the pores of Inanimate bodies._