Various

“ Blessed be God, notwithstanding the great devastations, that have been made in other parts of the world by earthquakes, we have been intirely free from any disaster of that nature: nor has any thing extraordinary happened in this country since you left it; only on Monday the 20th October last, betwixt the hours of three and four in the afternoon, the sky being very hazy, as it uses to be before a storm of thunder and lightning, there fell a black dust over all the country, tho' in greater quantities in some places than in others. ”

“ I am rather inclined to be of opinion, that it is to give a colour to something that wants colour. And indeed, who-ever tastes the common bakers bread against a piece of genuine wheat-bread, will have some reason to suspect, that all is not gold, that glitters. ”

“ For the same reason, the moon and stars are visible in the absence of the sun, and, on the contrary, are unseen when the sun is present: and if we light a candle, and set it in the sun-beams, the flame is lost to our sight, tho' the same candle will give us a considerable share of light in the night. As I have never before seen or heard of such an arch, I thought this account of it (imperfect as it is) might not be disagreeable to the Royal Society. ”

“ Ellis observes, upon the poetical description, which he lays Kœmpfer has given of the leaves of the wild varnish-tree turning red in the autumn, that he had not found it to be the case of the tree growing in the stove at Busbridge. How it appeared in that situation, I know not; but the leaves of all those, which are growing in the Chelsea garden, and stand in the open air, do constantly change to a purple colour in the autumn, before they fall off from the shrub: but those of the true varnish-tree are much more remarkable for the deepness of their colour. ”

“ I would not be understood, as if I meant to recommend this as exact; tho' I am in hopes, that, upon trial, it will be found nearer the truth, than any thing hitherto advanced. Neither will I lay any stress upon its approaching so near to the numbers advanced in my former letter; being sensible, that all the methods I have hitherto tried are liable to very great objections. Where certainty may be arrived at by a little industry, all hypothesis should be despised and rejected. ”

“ LETTER II. To the very honourable and learned the President and Members of the Royal Society.
Gentlemen,
Read May 5, 1757. EVERY theoretical inquiry, whose basis does not rest upon experiments, is at once exploded in this well-thinking age; where truth, under your patronage, has at length broke thro' those clouds, with which superstition, policy, or parade, had overwhelmed her. But experiments themselves, gentlemen, are not exempted from fallacy. ”

“ The rudiments of fruits, when once well formed, and a little advanced, are firm and acid: and the more remote they are from maturity, the more secure from putrifaction; and their acid juice is no small help to their preservation from growing soon rotten. But indeed, when the fruit advances in growth, the texture grows gradually more lax; the acid juices are now beginning to be replaced by saccharine or others more soft; the fibres are driven farther asunder, and they now arrive at their most ripe state: and the utmost maturity of fruits is the next step to putrifaction. ”

“ It is now (1754) eight years since, and she has had no relapse, no pain, no hardness in her breast; has married a second husband, by whom she has had a child, which she suckled. What more can be requisite to ascertain a cure?
Thus we have given a detail of this memorable case; wherein we see, that six drachms of one of the most poisonous vegetables that the world produces actually cured a woman, whom the most able physicians had given up as incurable; and who must otherwise have finished her miserable days in the most deplorable sufferings. ”

“ In this respect we have certainly a notable instance in the history before us in Professor Lambergen; whose industry, more especially as it was attended with success, merits our greatest acknowlegements; inasmuch as he has informed us, with no small degree of accuracy and precision, that the plant under consideration, which is well known to be of a highly deleterious nature, and that even in a small quantity, may be so managed, as to be productive of good effects, not to be found possibly by any other means. ”

“ Eeles has asserted, that the greatest possible rarefaction of water is when it boils. I think it might be said, with equal propriety, that the greatest rarefaction of solids was when they began to melt: and this may indeed be verbally true, if we chuse to alter the names of bodies, when they undergo any alteration by fire; so solids take the name of fluids, when they are in fusion; and water the name of vapour, when it is greatly rarefied in the steam-engine. Whence we find this assertion seems to be founded on a confusion in terms, and the fact far from being existent in nature. ”

“ In order to fill the shorter leg with mercury, to fit the instrument for a new experiment, it must be inclined till the mercury in the ball covers the orifice of the tube n. The cylinder being then heated, the mercury will be forced into the shorter leg, and will run down the thread of glass in drops, which will soon unite. By this means, such a quantity of mercury must be got into the shorter leg, as, upon the cooling of the instrument, will be sufficient to drive all the spirit of wine into the ball with a less degree of cold than what the thermometer is likely to be exposed to. ”

“ In fine, my Lord, opportunities so seldom offer at the sea-side to make these experiments with accuracy; and likewise to this, the strong lines of vegetation that these bodies carry in their appearance, and your Lordship will not be surprised, that there are so many gentlemen, even of the Royal Society, that totally disbelieve them to be animals.
Many there are in the Society, that are wavering between both opinions. ”

“ We have seen intire families infected; and almost every child of a leprous father or mother fall insensibly into the leprosy; and yet, in several other families, we have seen some children sound, and others tainted; the father has died of the disease, and the children grew old without any infection: so that, tho' it is certainly hereditary, yet we believe it is of the same nature with those in families troubled with the consumption, gravel, and other hereditary distempers; which are transmitted from father to son, without being so very regular, as to affect every one of the family. ”

“ Why the buff covering of inflammatory blood, the skum of heated milk, the sedative salt of borax, which are all specifically heavier than the liquids in which they are formed, are still formed at the surface of them? How benzoin, sulphur, and even the ponderous body mercury, may be raised into vapour, again to be condensed unaltered? [244] And, lastly, how water, whose parts appear from the æolipile to be capable of immeasurable expansion, should by heat alone become specifically lighter than the common atmosphere, without having recourse to a shell inclosing air, or other assistant machinery? ”

“ How long a skeleton whose bones are well dried and prepared, being totally deprived of its medullary substance, will last, as we now order them for anatomical purposes, we cannot say: but it may be reasonably conjectured, that they will undergo the fate of the softer kinds of wood, such as beech, which grows rotten in no great number of years; because their internal substance is spungy and cellular, and their crust is very thin, except about the middle of the bones of the arm and thigh, I mean the humerus and fœmur. ”

“ Dillenius was not altogether ignorant of this difference of genus in these two plants; but, rather than his Toxicodendron, which he had made agree exactly in the leaves, should not agree in the fructification, he makes the accurate Kœmpfer guilty of an unpardonable oversight, in not taking notice of the difference of the sexes of this varnish-tree in different plants: whereas we have just now shewn, that nothing can be more minutely and judiciously described, than he has done both the male and female parts of the blossom, which change into the fruit on the same plant. ”

“ Lastly, If the quickness of acquiring heat be in a greater proportion than their specific gravities (the power of expansion being equal) , then, during the time of their acquiring heat, there will be an instant, when the body, that was heavier when cold, will now become the lighter. From one or more of which principles, I apprehend, the volatility or fixity of all minerals, and many other bodies, takes its origin. ”

“ The spirit of a mixed body is commonly taken to be a subtile, penetrating, light, and volatile substance, more susceptible of motion than any other of its parts, and most easily separable from them by avolation. But that any chalybeat water contains such a substance, I think has never been made evident, unless where the water has been found to be impregnated with some other mineral principles. Some steel waters, I believe, contain a large proportion of air, whose elasticity may occasion it to break forth with an explosive force ”

“ As I knew, that this water flowed off a great body of coal, I often infused that fossil, taken from the pits near this level, in common water; but the infusions never yielded any tincture with galls. I tried in the same way another mineral, that the miners call blaes; which is a cliffery stratum of a blueish colour, that often lies both above and below the coal: also another fossil of a brown colour, which is very ponderous, and is called by the miners dogger; a thin seam of which often lies in the midst of the coal. ”

“ Thus, in a scorbutic or putrid disposition of the humours, soap at least ought to be totally omitted; and such patients, who are much troubled with the hæmorrhoids, ought to be sparing in its use, as the alkaline salt, with which it abounds, will scarcely fail to exasperate their pain. Where the patient is naturally very costive, less lime-water and more soap ought to be used; and, on the contrary, where the body is too loose, little or no soap is to be taken, but the cure is to be trusted to lime-water alone ”

“ Polype-beds, and the cells, which they contain, are commonly spoken of as being the work of polypes. They are compared to the honeycomb made by bees. It is more exact to say, that coral, and other coralline bodies, have the same relation to the polypes united to them, that there is between the shell of a snail and the snail itself, or between the bones of an animal, and the animal itself. Mons. Donati's words are as follow. “I am now of opinion, that coral is nothing else than a real animal, which has a very great number of heads. ”

“ The truest and best peat has very little (if any) earth in it; but is a composition of wood, branches, twigs, leaves, and roots of trees, with grass, straw, [111] plants, and weeds; and lying continually in water makes it soft and easy to be cut thro' with a sharp peat-spade. The colour is of a blackish brown; and if it be chewed between the teeth it is soft, and has no gritty matter in it, which the clob has. It is indeed of a different consistence in different places, some being softer, and some firmer and harder ”

“ There must needs be a very great quantity of iron in this water, when it yields as deep a colour with galls as a strong solution of sal Martis. I was indeed at first apprehensive, that this perhaps might not be owing so much to a large and uncommon proportion of chalybeat parts, as to the commixture of alum, which I judged to be in the water. But we see the contrary appears by these trials: for alum of itself affords no tincture with astringents, and, instead of rendering a solution of sal Martis with galls of a more intense colour, rather makes it lighter and more diluted. ”

“ Altho', in the preceding proposition, the body is supposed to be a perfect sphere, the solution, nevertheless, holds equally true in every other species of figures, as is manifest from the investigation. It is true, indeed, that the value of n will not be the same in these cases, even supposing those of c, f and F to remain unchanged; except in the spheroid only, where, as well as in the sphere, n will be = 2⁄5; the momentum of any spheroid about its axis being 2-5ths of the momentum of an equal quantity of matter placed in the circumference of the equator, as is very easy to demonstrate. ”

“ But if we consider, that the calculus infused in the urine of the person who drank the Carlsbad waters was kept always in a heat of 96 degrees, while in Dr. Newcome's experiment, which was made during part of the autumn and winter, no artificial heat was used, it will appear probable, that the dissolving power of his Lordship's urine was little inferior to that of the person who drank the Carlsbad waters; for lime-water, in a heat of 96 degrees, dissolves the calculus at least twice as fast, as in the common heat of the air in winter. ”