Next, that as Mushroms may be generated without seed, so does it not appear that they have any such thing as seed in any part of them; for having considered several kinds of them, I could never find any thing in them that I could with any probability ghess to be the seed of it, so that it does not as yet appear (that I know of) that Mushroms may be generated from a seed, but they rather seem to depend merely upon a convenient constitution of the matter out of which they are made, and a concurrence of either natural or artificial heat.

Thirdly, that by several bodies (as Salts and Metals both in Water and in the air, and by several kinds of sublimations in the Air) actuated and guided with a congruous heat, there may be produc’d several kinds of bodies as curiously, if not of a more compos’d Figure; several kinds of rising or Ebulliating Figures seem to manifest; as witness the shooting in the Rectification of spirits of Urine, Hart-horn, Bloud, &c. witness also the curious branches of evaporated dissolutions, some of them against the sides of the containing Jar:  others standing up, or growing an end, out of the bottom, of which I have taken notice of a very great variety.  But above all the rest, it is a very pretty kind of Germination which is afforded us in the Silver Tree, the manner of making which with Mercury and Silver, is well known to the Chymists, in which there is an Ebullition or Germination, very much like this of Mushroms, if I have been rightly inform’d of it.

Fourthly, I have very often taken notice of, and also observ’d with a Microscope, certain excrescencies or Ebullitions in the snuff of a Candle, which, partly from the sticking of the smoaky particles as they are carryed upwards by the current of the rarify’d Air and flame, and partly also from a kind of Germination or Ebullition of some actuated unctuous parts which creep along and filter through some small string of the Week, are formed into pretty round and uniform heads, very much resembling the form of hooded Mushroms, which, being by any means expos’d to the fresh Air, or that air which encompasses the flame, they are presently lick’d up and devour’d by it, and vanish.

The reason of which Phaenomenon seems to me, to be no other then this: 

That when a convenient thread of the Week is so bent out by the sides of the snuff that are about half an Inch or more, remov’d above the bottom, or lowest part of the flame, and that this part be wholly included in the flame; the Oyl (for the reason of filtration, which I have elsewhere rendred) being continualy driven up the snuff is driven likewise into this ragged bended-end, and this being remov’d a good distance, as half an Inch or more, above the bottom of the flame, the parts of the air that passes by it, are already, almost satiated with the dissolution of the boiling unctuous steams that issued out below, and therefore are not onely glutted, that is, can