TRANSMUTATION, the act of changing one substance into another.
Nature, says Sir Isaac Newton, is delighted with transmutation: water, which is a fluid, volatile, tasteless, salt, is, by heat, transmuted into vapour, which is a kind of air; and by cold into ice, which is a cold, transparent, brittle stone, easily dissolvable; and this stone is convertible again into water by heat, as vapour is by cold.—Earth, by heat, becomes fire, and, by cold, is turned into earth again; dense bodies, by fermentation, are rarefied into various kinds of air; and that air, by fermentation also, and sometimes without it, reverts into gross bodies. All bodies, beasts, fishes, insects, plants, &c. with all their various parts, grow and increase out of water and aqueous and saline tinctures; and, by putrefaction, all of them revert into water, or an aqueous liquor again.