Likewise glue is boiled from skins, paper is made from linen cloth, and silk from flax boiled in a very acrid lye of lime and ash of woad herb. If the downy parts are stripped from feathers and boiled in such a lye, they can be spun and woven like cotton. Any oil or spermatic mucilage can be coagulated into varnish, any liquor into gum, and so forth. All these are transmutations of natural things. Since enough has now been said about them, we shall set our concluding mark here.
End of the Seventh Book.
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Nine Books on the Nature of Things · Book Mode · Diotimos