Theatrum chemicum, praecipuos selectorum auctorum tractatus de chemiae et lapidis philosophici antiquitate, veritate, iure, praestantia, & operationibus, continens: in gratiam verae chemiae, et medicinae chemicae studiosorum ... congestum, et in sex partes seu volumina digestum; singulis voluminibus, suo auctorum et librorum catalogo primis pagellis: rerum vero & verborum indice postremis annexo. Volumen primum [- sextum]

No one doubts that all things are made from quicksilver and sulphur. We see indeed a worm naturally, and by natural artifice, changed into a fly, which differs from it in species; and a strangled calf into bees, wheat into darnel, and a strangled dog into a worm, through the putrefaction of ebullition. But we do not do this, rather nature does it, to whom we act as ministers. Similarly, we do not change metals, but nature: to whom we prepare the matter according to art: since it acts by itself, not we, but we are its ministers. This is from Geber, Abenhaen, or Ebenhaen. Augustine also says in On the Trinity, book 3: "Just as therefore we do not call parents the creators of crops, although the spirit of God works inwardly for these things to be created, by their motions applied from the outside." He says this. For art imitates nature, and in some things corrects and surpasses it, just as infirm nature is helped by the industry of physicians. This is from Dastin, book 1. For art often helps nature, if it is ever impeded. Geber, book 1, chap. 9: "Artifice in many things completes the defect of nature." There are also those who assert that the hair of women can be turned into snakes. We see also stones and frogs falling from the sky, and stones generated in the kidneys and bladders of men.

Avicenna, in his book On the Soul, first diction, chap. 1, says: A man can make a living thing from barley. For if you take horse manure, which is nothing other than barley, and put it in a suitable warm place, from it proceed animals which they call Abumes: just as the fly arises from the putrefaction of air, and lice from the putrefaction of human humors. This is Avicenna.

Thus if by a certain hidden, abstruse, and wonderful disposition of nature, and skill unknown to men, seminal virtues burst forth into owed species in their ways and ends determined by nature, as blessed Augustine says.

Because, as Aristotle says, "From just any thing, not just any thing is made, but a determined thing from a determined thing."

And nothing is convenient to a thing (says Jo. Dastin, book 1) except what is closer to it by its own nature.

The same Dastin: By nature, principles are created, and by art, composites are made from them: thus also our stone is perfected by art, since, that it may be perfected, it is apt and born by nature: nature, however, does not have the motion for the complete Elixir to be made, unless it is perfected by operation and art.

Furthermore, as Theophrastus writes in his book On the History of Plants, 2, chap. 6, natural mutations are perceived in the genus of animals, either by reason of time, or for the mutation of places, or generation. For from a moth, a caterpillar, then from it a butterfly is born. And in many others, this has been noted to happen. Also, water-mint,