2 How Nature Destroys Animals

Chapter outline

Animal putrefaction and the departure of the balsamic life-spirit

Maggots, flies, and the author's account of successive transformation

Volatile and fixed residues and their return to vegetable generation

Animals putrefy and become maggots and worms; these become gnats. When their appointed time has passed, these in turn resolve into the first being of the universal limbus: that is, into the saline-nitrous or chaotic nature, then into water and vapour, from which come dew and rain, and nitre and salt are regenerated once more, subtle and exceedingly volatile. Animals are by nature very moist and full of juices and volatile salt. Thus, as soon as their balsamic life-spirit has flown away, they enter into putrefaction, begin to rot, swell up, and stink. The volatile breathes out and infects the air with a hideous stench; everything becomes slippery, moist, and wet. For brevity, and to avoid disgusting an honest person, I shall leave this kingdom and explain the matter better through plants, since it is almost the same. But anyone who wants fuller information may, if they please, go to places where dead livestock lie and observe the changes daily: they will see more than they wish. Maggots crawl about in great numbers, accompanied by a stench; when well fattened, they are transformed into gnats and flies.

For if someone takes well-fattened maggots, shuts them in a glass, and gives them a little stinking meat for nourishment, then sets the glass in the open air with its mouth closed by perforated paper, and places it in the sun, within a few days and hours they will see gnats, or creatures of that kind, grow and develop from the maggots. This comes partly from the animal principle and partly from the volatile. The more fixed part, which is neither fleeting nor volatile, becomes water and earth, from which saltpetre and salt can be leached. These remaining parts, saltpetre and salt, are found in every subject when it reaches its final reduction. The volatile smokes away and goes out into the air as vapour, to become chaotic there;

the more fixed part passes into earth and water, where it too is reduced to the first, more fixed seed, nitre and salt. From these reduced animal principles, plants grow again; thus the animal kingdom becomes vegetable in its descent, as was taught in the first part. But because the bones in animals are much harder and more coagulated, nature takes longer over them before making them into earth and maggots, as will be remarked in the discussion of woody plants.