kinds of animals, one exceedingly small, and the other very large; which latter sort had on the tail something like fins: there were but very few of either sort. The compounded salt or vitriol of the water was shot into pretty figures, but all irregular. They looked like a small heap of little sticks, laid across each other at all angles and positions, only they were transparent, and a little greenish, as crystals of a chalybeate nature used to be.

I have infused whole pepper-corns, bay-berries, oats, barley, and wheat, in water, whose scum, after two or three days, has afforded animals, as has been often already found by others, at least as to some of them; but I found the greatest numbers and variety in wheat and barley-water, and the fewest in that wherein bay-berries had been steeped.

How such vast numbers of animals can be thus, as it were at pleasure, produced, without having recourse to equivocal generation, seems a very great difficulty to account for. But though the solving of it that way makes short work of the matter, for it is easy enough to say they are bred there by putrefaction, yet the asserting equivocal generation seems to me to imply more absurdities and difficulties than perhaps may appear at first sight.

On the great Age of Henry Jenkins; in a Letter from Mrs. Ann Savile to Dr. Tancred Robinson, F.R.S. - [1696.] WHEN I came first to live at Bolton, it was told me, there lived in that parish a man near 150 years old; that he had sworn as witness in a cause at York to 120 years, which the judge reproving him for, he said he was butler at that time to Lord Conyers, and they told me, that it was reported his name was found in some old register of the Lord Conyer's menial servants. Being one day in my sister's kitchen, Henry Jenkins coming in to beg an alms, I had a mind to examine him: I told him he was an old man who must soon expect to give an account to God of all he did or said; and I desired him to tell me very truly how old he was; on which he paused a little, and then said, that, to the best of his remembrance, he was about 162 or 163. I asked him what kings he remembered; he said Henry VIII.; I asked him what public thing he could longest remember? he said Flodden-field. I asked whether the king was there? he said, No, he was in France, and the Earl of Surry was general. I asked him how old he might be then? he said, he believed between 10 and 12; "for," says he, "I was sent to North

allerton with a horse-load of arrows, but they sent a bigger boy from thence to the army with them." I thought by these marks I might find something in histories, and looking in an old chronicle, I found that Flodden-field was about 152 years before; so that if he was 10 or 11 years, he must be 162 or 163, as he said, when I examined him. I found by the book, that bows and arrows were then used, and that the earl he named was then general, and that King Henry VIII. was then at Tournay; so that I don't know what to answer to the consistences of these things, for Henry Jenkins was a poor man, and could neither write nor read. There were also four or five in the same parish, that were reputed all of them to be 100 years old, or within two or three years of it, and they all said he was an elderly man ever since they knew him; for he was born in another parish, and before any register was in churches, as it is said; he told me then, too, that he was butler to the Lord Conyers, and remembered the abbot of Fountains-abbey very well, who used to drink a glass with his lord heartily, and that the dissolution of the monasteries he said he well remembered.. Ann Savile.

This Henry Jenkins died Dec. 8. 1670, at Ellerton, on Swale. The battle of Flodden-field was fought on the 9th of Sept. 1513. Henry Jenkins was 12 years old when Floddenfield was fought, so that he lived 169 years. Old Parr lived 152 years nine months, so that Henry Jenkins outlived him by computation 16 years, and was the oldest man born on the ruins of this postdiluvian world.

This Henry Jenkins, in the last century of his life, was a fisherman, and used to wade in the streams; his diet was coarse and sour; but towards the latter end of his days he begged up and down; he has sworn in chancery and other courts, to above 140 years' memory, and was often at the assizes at York, whither he generally went a-foot; and I have heard some of the country gentlemen affirm, that he frequently swam in the rivers after he was past the age of 100 years.

Microscopical Observations on the Seeds of Figs, Strawberries, &c. By Mr. LEUWENHOEK.-[1696.]

I HAVE taken a great deal of pains, to see the plant in the seed of a fig, yet I could never accomplish it, for it seemed to me that the figs were not perfectly ripe, when they were pulled off and turned up, to be sent beyond seas. But having some lately which seemed to have been gathered ripe, I

therefore took many seeds of these figs to dissect them; and after I had cut or broke their hard husk, I brought out their kernel or pith perfect; and after taking off their film, and had separated the stuff wherein the young plant was laid, I saw the perfect plant, consisting of two leaves, and of that part that is to make the roots and stem.

When eating some strawberries, and fixing my eyes on the little apices we see on a strawberry, I concluded that every one of them was a seed; and to confirm my opinion I took a strawberry, one of the largest and ripest, and there I found a great many seeds, after I had taken off the film wherein they were wrapt up, and found that every seed had also a string by which they were nourished. I opened several of them, by taking off their hard husk, and saw, that every one of them had the stuff we call a pith: having separated this pith from its ancient film, I took out the plant, which I also caused to be delineated, that we might see how many seeds we send together into our stomach, when we eat but one spoonful of strawberries; for when I divided one of the largest into four equal parts, I found in one of these parts about 50 seeds; according to this, the strawberry contained 200 seeds, and another that was much less I guessed to contain 120. Now if we consider that a young plant of strawberries shoots in a year (for I never heard that they sow strawberries) into several shoots over the ground, which take root, and grow all up into plants, and bear the next year; and that besides this, each plant produces many strawberries, each whereof has as many seeds as is before said; we must lay our hand on our mouth, and be astonished at the increasing and great multiplicity of seeds of this plant.

On the Use of Opium among the Turks. By Dr. EDWARD SMYTH, F.R.S.-[1696.]

I MADE enquiry for the most famous opium-eater in the country about Smyrna, and had recommended to me one Mustapha Shatoor, an inhabitant of Sediqui, a village six miles from that city, by trade a coffee-man, and 45 years old when I discoursed with him. He told me his constant eating was three drams a day of crude opium, one half of which was his dose in the morning, and the other half in the afternoon, but that he could safely take double this quantity.

Resolving, therefore, to be an eye-witness of what he could do, I provided the best opium I could get, and weighed it nicely into drams; I desired him to come to me before he

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had taken any part of his dose, and that I would entertain him the next morning; he took the invitation thankfully, and came to me the next day at nine in the morning, but excused his having taken half a dram before, because he wanted strength to rise out of his bed without it. I laid before him my opium made up in pills, each weighing a dram, and desired him to eat what he pleased; he took one dram and a half, making it up in three pills, and chewing it with a little water; he commended the opium, but was not willing to eat more at that time, and I would not press him, for fear of accidents. He stayed with me about half an hour after he had eaten the opium; the visible effects it had upon him were to make his eyes sparkle, and to give a new air of life and brightness to his face. He told me that he was extremely refreshed, and made very cheerful by my entertainment, and that it gave him his keph, as the Turks express it.

He went from me to his coffee-house, and being desirous to observe him that day, I found him in half an hour labouring heartily at cleaving wood to burn. I desired his company again, when he was prepared for a second dose; he came to me at three in the afternoon, and took the same quantity as in the morning, and appeared after it with the same symptoms. He told me he would be again ready for the same quantity, at the same distance of time, but I pursued the experiment no further. He says it has always the same effects, giving him vigour and spirit, and is now become as necessary to him, as any other part of his sustenance; that he has many wives and children; that it never affects him with sleep and drowsiness, but rather hinders his reposing, when he happens to take too much of it; that he entered upon this practice 25 years ago, beginning with the quantity of a grain, and so training up nature gradually to larger quantities; that the want of it, and the desire of taking more, grows daily upon him; that his common expence for living is three parahs a day in opium, one in tobacco, two in coffee, and two in bread; a parah is about a penny farthing in our

money.

The alteration and impairment which this custom has produced in him are weakness, his legs being small, his gums eaten away, so that the teeth stand bare to the roots, his complexion very yellow, and appearing older by 20 years than he really is. I asked him if he knew any body who could take opium in larger quantities; his answer was, he believed there were none in that country that could outdo him, but that he was informed of some in Arabia and about

Damascus, where this custom of eating opium obtained more universally.

Opium is commonly taken by the messengers in Turkey, who are employed in taking quick despatches: it is generally part of their provision: they take it when they find themselves tired, and it gives them strength and spirits to proceed. The Turks use opium, made up with something that renders it palatable, at their feast called Biram, to make them cheerful, which may be one reason of its prevailing so much; for finding it then entertains them with pleasing fancies, they are tempted to continue it, and so the use of it becomes necessary and grows upon them.

An Account of strange Beans frequently cast on Shore on the Orkney Isles. By HANS SLOANE.-[1696.]

I HAD several times heard of strange beans frequently thrown up by the sea on the islands, on the north-west parts of Scotland, especially on those most exposed to the waves of the great ocean; they are no otherwise regarded than as they serve to make snuff-boxes. Four sorts of them have been sent me, very fresh, being little injured by the sea: three of these beans grow in Jamaica, where I have gathered them.

How these several beans should come to the Scotch isles, and one of them to Ireland, seems very hard to determine. It is very easy to conceive, that, growing in the woods in Jamaica, they may either fall from the trees into the rivers, or be any other way conveyed by them into the sea. It is likewise easy to believe, that being got to sea, and floating in it in the neighbourhood of that island, they may be carried from thence by the wind and current, which being obstructed by the main continent of America, is forced through the Gulf of Florida, or canal of Bahama, going there constantly E. and into the N. American sea. But how they should come the rest of their way I cannot tell, unless it be thought reasonable, that as ships when they go south expect a tradeeasterly-wind, so when they come north, they expect and generally find a westerly wind, for at least two parts of three of the whole year; so that the beans being brought north by the current from the Gulf of Florida, they may be supposed by this means at last to arrive in Scotland.

By the same means that these beans come to Scotland, it is reasonable to believe, that the winds and currents brought from America those several things towards the Azores and Porto Santo, which are recorded by Fernand. Columb. in