Cavendish 1666

"if I am condemned, I shall be annihilated to nothing: but my ambition is such, as I would either be a world, or nothing" -- in Poems, "To Naturall Philosophers", qtd on pg. xxxvi

X Of a Butterfly

• describes a creature that "appeared partly a vegetable, animal and mineral" (61)

XIV Of Natural Productions

• "I cannot wonder with those, who admire that a creature which inhabits the air, doth yet produce a creature, that for some time lives in the water as a fish, and afterward becomes an inhabitant of the air for this is but a production of one animal from another: but, what is more, I observe that there are productions of and from creatures of quite different kinds; as for example, that vegetables can and do breed animals, and animals, minerals and vegetables, and so forth" (66)

XXII Of Wood Petrified

• clay, dirt, etc., often turn to stone -- they are of a uniform nature, and therefore can transform uniformly
• animals cannot, "for as animals have different parts, so these parts are of different figures, not only exteriorly, but interiorly" (90) -- several sorts of flesh; "all which would puzzle and withstand the power of Ovid's metamorphosing of gods and goddesses" (91)
• "For, if all creatures could or should be metamorphosed into one sort of figure, then this whole world would perhaps come to be one stone, which would be a hard world." (91)