The fourth Chapter.
What strange things are brought to passe by naturall magicke.
THE dailie use and practise of medicine taketh awaie all admiration of the woonderfull effects of the same. Manie other things of lesse weight, being more secret and rare, seeme more miraculous. As for example (if it be true that J. Bap. Neap. and many other writers doo constantlie affirme.) Tie a wild bull to a figtree, and he will be presentlie tame; or hang an old cocke thereupon, and he will immediatlie be tender; as also the feathers of an eagle consume all other feathers, if they be intermedled together. Wherein it may not be denied, but nature sheweth hir selfe a proper workwoman. But it seemeth unpossible, that a little fish being but halfe a foot long, called Remora or Remiligo, or/292. of some Echeneis, staieth a mightie ship with all hir loade and tackling, and being also under saile. And yet it is affirmed by so manie and so grave authors,Pompanatius. lib. de incant. cap. 3. J. Wierus de lamiis. Jasp. Peucer H. Cardan. &c. that I dare not denie it; speciallie, bicause I see as strange effects of nature otherwise: as the propertie of the loadstone, which is so beneficiall to the mariner; and of Rheubarb, which onelie medleth with choler, and purgeth neither flegme nor melancholie, & is as beneficiall to the physician, as the other to the mariner./