finer fort of common brown paper. The Italian naturalifts were greatly divided concerning its origin; but according to the moft prevailing opinion, the formation of it was attributed to a cafual aggregate of the fibres of different kinds of filamentous plants, collected together by the waters, and left on the furface of the ground after their retreat. This folution did not fatisfy the Author, who found it difficult to conceive that a paper, of fo delicate and uniform a texture as that of Cortona, fhould owe its origin to fo complicated and remote a cause.

On examining the threads of this paper with a good microfcope, he found that they confifted merely of filaments of the Conferva Plinii, or common fpecies of Conferva, without the admixture of any other plant what foever. He has fent fpecimens of this native paper to the Royal Society, together with an artificial paper manufactured from the fame fubstance, and a fpecimen of a much better and stronger kind, made of the fame fpecies of Conferva by Sir Andrew Dick, near Edinburgh. Article 33. On a rare Plant found in the Isle of Skye. By John Hope, M.D. F. R. S. &c.

This plant, which is of the aquatic kind, is here figured and defcribed under the tile of Eriocaulon decangulare. Article 52. Some Account of an Oil tranfmitted by Mr. George Brownrigg, of North Carolina. By William Watson, M.Ď.

R. S. S.

As the object of this article promifes to be of great public utility, we shall give the fubftance of this account, with a view of extending the information contained in it.

In our fouthern American colonies, and in the fugar iflands, a plant is cultivated, principally by the negroes, who use the fruit of it as food, under the name of ground nuts, or ground pease. It is called by Ray Arrachis Hypogaios Americanus. Like a few of the trifoliate tribe, when in its flowering ftate, it bends towards the earth, into which the pointal enters, extending itself to a fufficient depth, where it forms the feed veffel and fruit; which laft is brought to maturity under ground, from whence it is dug up for ufe. In the fouthern climates vaft crops of it are produced from light and fandy land of small value.

From thefe feeds, firft bruifed and put into canvas bags, Mr. Brownrigg has exprefied a pure, clear, well tafted oil which, in Dr. Watson's opinion, may be used for the fame purposes, both in food and phyfic, as the oils of olives or almonds. He obferves, however, that Sir Hans Sloane had formerly, in the first volume of his Natural Hiftory of Jamaica, made mention of an oil as good as that of almonds, which had been expressed from these feeds; and that therefore Mr. B. is not the first who has produced oil from this vegetable production: though he is intitled to our acknowledgments for reviving the remembrance

brance of it, and profecuting this discovery. From fpecimens both of the feeds and oil, which were produced to the Royal Society, it appears that neither of them are fubject to turn rancid by keeping: the oil, particularly, which had been sent hither from Carolina eight months before, without any particular care, and which had undergone the heats of the fummer, being found perfectly sweet and good. But the principal merit of Mr. Brownrigg's communication, is the low price at which this oil may be obtained. The value of a bufhel of the ground pease in Carolina, the Doctor has been informed, does not exceed eight-pence, or thereabouts; and it appears that this quantity will, without heat, yield one gallon of oil; and with heat, a much larger quantity, but of an inferior quality. We need not enlarge on the obvious benefits which may result to our Colonifts, from a fuccessful profecution of this revived discovery; as they may hereby not only fupply their own immenfe confumption of olive oil, annually imported from Europe, but even export this article hither, or to any of thofe places where the oil of olives is ufually carried.

This article is fucceeded by the catalogue of plants annually prefented to the Society by the company of Apothecaries. Article 11. Abstract of a Letter from Stephen de Vifme, Efq; at Canton in China, &c. containing an Account of an Earthquake at Macao, and a fhort Description of a fingular Species of Monkeys, &c. Communicated by Henry Baker, F. R. S.

There is nothing particular in this eastern earthquake, which however is accompanied with a fhort defcription and figure of a very fingular animal of the monkey tribe, found in the interior parts of Bengal; from fome of which, that have been brought to Decca, the drawing which accompanies this article was taken. They are of the height of a man, have no tails, and, according to the Author, are thought to have been originally produced by an intercourfe with the human kind:-an opinion which the defigner feems to have been well inclined to ftrengthen, by the grotesque figure which he has given of one of these caracatura's of the human fpecies, represented in a kind of dancing or tumbling attitude. Dr. Maty, in a note, fufpects this animal to be the ape without a tail, defcribed by Buffon, under the name of Gibbon, in the 14th volume of the Hiftoire Naturelle, page 92.

Article 18. Obfervations on a particular Manner of Increase in the Animalcula of Vegetable Infufions; with the Discovery of an indiffoluble Salt arifing from Hempfeed, &c. By John Ellès, Efq; F. R. S.

In the first part of this paper, the ingenious Author gives the refult of some experiments made by him, at the request of Linnæus, on the infufions of mushrooms in water; with a view

to ascertain the truth of Baron Munchafen's theory, that the feeds of these fungi are first animals, and then plants.' It ap peared evidently to him, that the motion obferved in those feeds was not spontaneous, but was produced by the innumerable and fcarcely visible animalcula, which teemed in the infufion, and by pecking at the feeds, put them in motion in a great variety of directions. We could, from our own experience, inftance many fimilar appearances of life and motion, obferved in the minute globules, or other inanimated particles, contained in microscopical infufions, caused by the numerous and invifible inhabitants of the drop; whofe concern in producing thefe motions could only be detected by ufing ftill greater magnifiers: and we have long been convinced that many of M. Buffon's organical particles owe their feemingly spontaneous motions to the fame cause.

The fatisfaction which the Author received in clearing up this point, led him to make many other curious and interesting microscopical obfervations, relative to thofe of the ingenious Mr. Needham, as given in the 45th volume of the Tranfactions, and in fome fubfequent publications. But to render the Author's obfervations on this fubject intelligible, to fuch of our Readers as are not acquainted with Mr. Needham's fyftem, (which however has made confiderable noife in the philofophical world) we fhall extract from his writings a fhort account of it. According to this hypothefis, the microscopical animalcules, which appear in vegetable and animal infufions, are not the offspring of parents of the fame kind; but are the productions of a certain active force, with which every microscopical point of vegetable and animal matter is endued. He affirms that the fubftance employed in these infufions, firft, by its own innate energy, divides itself into filaments, and then vegetates into numberless Zoophytes, from which proceed all the different fpecies of microscopical animals; and that thefe very animals, after a certain time, become motionlefs, and fubfide to the bottom, where they are refolved into a gelatinous and filamentous fubftance, which fhoots into new Zoophytes, yielding animals of a leffer fpecies. Among other inftances, to prove that this is the process of nature in their production, he refers us to the appearances obferved in the infufion of a grain of wheat; where the feed is obferved exercifing this productive force, by vegetating into numerous ftems, crowned with heads bursting, as it were, into life, and throwing out their animal progeny. This operation is fucceeded by the pufhing forth of new thoots, and the forming of new heads, for the production of another ge

neration.

Such are the general outlines of Mr. Needham's fyftem, as we collect them from his writings: but thefe filaments and ftems, the fuppofed vegetable parents of the animalcular race,

Mr.

Mr. Ellis affirms, after a careful fcrutiny with the best glaffes, to be nothing more than the roots and ftalks of that clafs of fungi, called Mucor, or mouldinefs, vegetating in the infufion, and the growth of which is so amazingly quick, that the plants may be perceived, in the microfcope, even to grow and feed under the eye of the obferver. Their frems, he observes, terminate each in an oblong feed veffel; from a hole in the top of which he has plainly feen their numerous and minute globular feeds projected, and afterwards turning about in the water, as if they were animated: but this laft motion, he affirms, is owing to myriads of the minuteft animalcula, contained in the putrid water, and attacking the feeds of the mucor for food. From hence we think it fhould follow, that the infused vegetable fubftance is not the parent, but the pabulum or nidus, both of the mucor, and of the fmall microfcopic fry, whom Mr. Needham's theory would deprive of the honour of animal parentage: and the pre-exiftent germs, or the feminal fytem, may yet ftand their ground, against the active forces of Mr. Needham, and the organical molecules of M. Buffon, notwithstanding the experiment of the wheat infufion.

Mr. Ellis next relates fome experiments made on boiled potatoes contained in a glafs veffel, on which boiling water was poured, and the mouth of the veffel inftantly covered with a glafs cover;' and expreffes his furprize that, in twenty-four hours, the liquor appeared full of animacula: in the fame manner as that of another infufion of raw potatoes, in cold water, covered in the fame manner. We have formerly feen animalcula, less than even the tails of the fpermatic animals, produced, in the space of four hours, in an infufion of cantharides in boiling water, poured upon them in a vial, the mouth of which was immediately well ftopped with a cork; and have often wondered that Mr. Needham, or those who adopt his fyftem, have not endeavoured to put the truth of it out of all reasonable doubt, by experiments made in a still more unexceptionable manner than those, of a fimilar kind to the preceding, which occur in his writings on this fubject. His hot mutton gravy, for inftance, inclosed in a vial fecured with a well mafticated cork, and afterwards placed for fome minutes in hot afhes, in order to destroy any infects or their ova, which might be contained in the empty part of the vial, was, after a fufficient time, found fwarming with animalcules: but nothing lefs, we apprehend, than the feal of Hermes itself, applied to fhut up all poffible communication from without, can reconcile many to a doctrine fo difficult of digeftion as this; that beings endued with fpontaneous motion, many of them most curiously organised, can be produced by the mere energy and activity of the minute partiREV. Mar. 1771.

P

cles

cles of vegetable and animal matter, in a state of decompofition. Should an infufion thus hermetically fealed, and, in all human probability, effectually fecured from the inroads of any of these animated points, be yet, upon opening it, found teeming with animal life, we own we can fcarce fee any resource left to the most obftinate adherent to the doctrine of preexiftent germs; unless he should make his laft retreat into this fuppofition, that as thefe expeditious breeders have been known, he would fay, to produce a progeny in the space of four hours, why not in as many minutes?-in a matter ready prepared for their reception, and during the very time while the operator is unfealing his glaffes, and preparing for obfervation.

We have dwelt fo long on this curious fubject, that we shall only add a general account of fome fingular tranfactions, which pals in the animalcular world, relative to the multiplication of individuals, which are related in the remaining part of this article; the hint of which was lately given to the Author by M. de Sauffure of Geneva. When a female of our own fpecies is in a condition to increafe her kind, her taper waift enlarges, and the daily fpreads more and more about the hips: but, it feems, the Valvex of Linnæus (produced in infufions of hempfeed, pine branches, tea-feed, &c.) occafionally multiplies her fpecies by a directly contrary courfe. She begins the work by gradually contracting her virgin figure (which is oval) about the middle; and at laft fairly halves her perfon with her offfpring, by dividing it into two equal portions, one of which becomes a new individual. If we had room or inclination, it would be a curious fubject of difcuffion, which of the two is the mother, and which the daughter: but as fettling the right of primogeniture between them would lead us too far, we fhall only add, that a reprefentation of this procefs, as observed in five different kinds of this genus of microfcopal animals, is given in a plate; accompanied with figures of the chrystals of what the Author, we think fomewhat improperly, terms an indiffoluble falt, which he has difcovered in aqueous infufions of hempfeed, after they became putrid. He recommends the confideration of this heteroclite production to the faculty, on a fuppofition that it may be poffeffed of fome medical virtues. The grains of this falt are faid to be about the fize of those of the finest basket falt, and of a pale yellowifh colour when dry. It does not appear from this paper, in what quantity it can be procured; nor is any thing faid of its tafte, or other fenfible qualities; but if thefe chryftals be really indiffoluble, they are not falts, nor can have any tafte.

MEDICINE and ANATOM Y. Article 3. An extraordinary Cafe of three Pins fwallowed by a Girl,

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and