124. How is a reported striking effect made to serve as evidence?

125. What additional reasoning is needed to establish the cause of such an effect?

126. Why should a visible effect be distinguished from an explanation of its mechanism?

127. What can a historical reader learn from the surrounding argument when an operational passage is omitted?

128. How should that editorial omission be disclosed in a bilingual edition?

129. Which assertion in the retained argument depends most directly on the earlier examination of rainwater?

130. What question would you carry from this chapter into the demonstrations involving water and earth?

Book I Chapter 12 Nitre and Salt in Waters and Earths

Read with: I.12.

131. What distinction does the author make between the appearance of water and its concealed principles?

132. How does the treatment of earth contribute to the chapter’s demonstration?

133. What makes a collected residue relevant to the argument about universal seed?

134. Which earlier account is needed to interpret the names given to the products?

135. How does the chapter connect a particular sample with waters and earths generally?

136. What could differences among samples reveal about the limits of that inference?

137. How does the distinction between fixed and volatile organise the evidence?

138. What is assumed when a material is identified through its behaviour?

139. How could you restate the argument without strengthening its conclusion?

140. What remains to be shown before applying the same account to living beings?

Book I Chapter 13 Nitre and Salt in Animals

Read with: I.13.

141. What does the author claim about the material origin of animals?

142. How does the return of animal matter to simpler products support that claim?

143. What relation is assumed between a body’s origin and the products of its destruction?

144. Could the products of an analysis alone establish the original manner of generation?

145. Why does the distinction between universal and particular principles matter here?

146. How are animal forms connected with the broader circulation of nourishment?

147. What does the chapter require the reader to remember about water and spirit?

148. Which part of the demonstration is observational and which is interpretive?

149. What difference would a highly volatile animal product make within this scheme?

150. What question about living form is left after the common principles have been identified?

Book I Chapter 14 Nitre and Salt in Plants

Read with: I.14.

151. Why does the author begin with knowledge attributed to gardeners and farmers?

152. How are dew, rain, water and earth made to explain plant growth?

153. Why does the author deny that bare earth and empty water are sufficient?

154. What is the purpose of comparing treated and untreated seeds?

155. Which conditions would need to remain comparable for that comparison to be persuasive?

156. What is claimed about plant flame and the presence of nitre?

157. Does the appearance of a flame establish the particular explanation offered for it?

158. What do oil, vinegar, spirit and alkali contribute to the analysis of plants?

159. How does the return to universal seed connect this chapter with the opening account of generation?

160. What can an unresolved phrase teach a reader about the limits of editorial certainty?

Book I Chapter 15 Nitre and Salt in Minerals

Read with: I.15.

161. How does increasing earthliness change the behaviour of a principle?

162. What relationship is proposed between fixation and the capacity to burn or give light?

163. How does the author move from the common principles to distinct mineral bodies?

164. What evidence is drawn from mineral dissolution or separation?

165. Why must a mineral’s greater fixity affect the manner of examining it?

166. How does the chapter connect invisible vapour with visible and durable products?

167. What is gained by treating the mineral kingdom as continuous with the other two kingdoms?

168. What difference among kingdoms must still be preserved?

169. Which inference in this demonstration most needs comparison with a particular case?

170. How does this chapter prepare the later, much longer account of mineral generation?

Book I Chapter 16 Putrefaction as a Key

Read with: I.16.

171. Why does the author call putrefaction a principal point, gate and key?

172. What does a key open in the argument of the book?

173. How can one process be assigned a role in both generation and destruction?

174. What changes in the way a subject’s principles are bound together?

175. Why does access to a material’s principles matter to the practitioner?

176. How does this chapter connect with the author’s demand to understand nature before following recipes?

177. What would distinguish a mere loss of form from preparation for another generation?

178. How much explanatory work is carried by the metaphor of opening?

179. What question must a definition of putrefaction answer in the next chapter?

180. Where else in the book would you expect this key to be used?

Book I Chapter 17 the Meaning of Putrefaction

Read with: I.17.

181. Which changes mark putrefaction in the author’s description?

182. How does the author connect moisture with the awakening of activity?

183. What relation does heat bear to the process?

184. Why must different degrees or conditions of a subject be distinguished?

185. How does the account connect a visible alteration with the separation of principles?

186. What role does the implanted spirit play in the explanation?

187. What can a change of smell or appearance establish on its own?

188. How is the process connected with the possibility of a renewed form?

189. Which qualification prevents the description from becoming one simple recipe for every material?

190. How does the definition sharpen the key metaphor of the preceding chapter?

Book I Chapter 18 the Results of Putrefaction

Read with: I.18.

191. What does putrefaction make accessible that was previously concealed?

192. How does the author relate its products to the original principles?

193. What is meant by moving from a bound state to a state available for further work?

194. How could separation make regeneration possible?

195. Why does the order of the resulting portions matter?

196. Which earlier distinction between subtle and coarse returns here?

197. What would count as a change in a subject’s specific form?

198. What further operation is needed before an opened subject becomes a perfected product?

199. How does the chapter avoid treating destruction as absolute disappearance?

200. Which claim about putrefaction is most consequential for the operations in Book II?

Book I Chapter 19 Volatile Acid and Alkali

Read with: I.19.

201. What sequence connects the volatile, the acid and the alkali?

202. How is the reverse sequence made possible?

203. What role does the acid play between the two extremes?

204. Why are examples from wine and its products useful to the author?

205. How does repeated treatment alter what first appeared to be a fixed distinction?

206. What does conjunction require besides the presence of its ingredients?

207. How does the author explain the relation of oil to acid?

208. Which examples test whether common names conceal different operative conditions?

209. How should alternate readings of a quantity affect a reader’s confidence in a historical procedure?

210. What would be lost if the whole chapter were reduced to a simple list of three substances?

Book I Chapter 20 Universal and Particular Principles

Read with: I.20.

211. What makes a volatile principle universal rather than particular?

212. How does specification change a common principle’s relation to an individual body?

213. Why should a shared origin not make every material an equally suitable substitute?

214. What differences in strength or purity can exist within one named principle?

215. How does the chapter organise the relation among volatile, acid and alkali?

216. What must a practitioner know before deciding that one principle is missing?

217. How does this account protect the argument from a crude interchangeability of all things?

218. Which distinction clarifies the use of rainwater in the earlier demonstration?

219. Where might the terms universal and particular shift their scale within a passage?

220. How would you explain the chapter’s main distinction to a reader familiar only with ordinary seed?

Book I Chapter 21 the Generation of Animals

Read with: I.21.

221. What distinguishes an animal’s particular generation from the production of universal seed?

222. How do nourishment and transformation connect an animal to the other kingdoms?

223. What role is assigned to volatile and fixed principles in a living form?

224. How does the author relate an animal’s structure to the principles from which it arises?

225. What happens to those relations when the animal dies?

226. Why might the same material have different significance before and after assimilation?

227. How are reproductive images used as explanations of more general processes?

228. Which claims in the chapter are supported by familiar observation?

229. Which claims require a theory that exceeds those observations?

230. How does the discussion prepare the comparison with plant generation?

Book I Chapter 22 the Generation of Plants

Read with: I.22.

231. Why does the author call the root a vegetable magnet?

232. How do soil, rain and the plant’s own structure cooperate in nourishment?

233. What is shared among root, stem, leaves and flowers, and what differs in their roles?

234. How does the chapter connect plant growth with the return of animal excrement to the soil?

235. What makes the vegetable kingdom intermediate between minerals and animals?

236. How does the analysis of a plant distinguish volatile, acid, oil and fixed portions?

237. Why does the author require intermediate principles when attempting to reunite what has been separated?

238. What does the chapter reveal about the author’s attitude toward costly or frustrating practice?

239. How do his claims of experience differ from his general claims about all plants?

240. Which part of this long chapter most clearly connects a familiar act of cultivation with the larger philosophy?

Book I Chapter 23 the Generation of Minerals

Read with: I.23.

241. How does the mineral-generation tree organise the passage from spirit to glass?

242. What is the difference between the remote origin and proximate matter of a metal?

243. Why does the author give Gur a place in the sequence?

244. How do vitriol, sulphur, arsenic and marcasite function as intermediate stages?