From the book
A Chymical Dictionary
Gerhard Dorn and John French · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordCoral named through the image of a sea shrub.
- A place to readThe historical definition below, 1650 dictionary, unnumbered definition page 6; facsimile PDF page 334.
Historical definition
Arbor Maris is coral, which grows like a shrub in the sea.
Meaning
The entry supplies both a material identification and the resemblance behind its descriptive name. The shrub comparison concerns growth or form in the sea; it should not be silently converted into a modern biological classification. The historical account calls the substance coral.
This is a useful example of an image that the dictionary itself decodes. A reader encountering a sea-tree expression can first test the coral identification against the passage. It is more restrained to begin with that explicit explanation than to supply a broader symbolic meaning unsupported by the text.
Places to read
- Arbor MarisRead the complete historical definition and its commentary.
Source note
Historical source. 1650 dictionary, unnumbered definition page 6; facsimile PDF page 334 — Facsimile