400 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 130. 



1 694, and the former was probably of nearly the 

 same age. They were close friends to the end of 

 their lives, and Wilson published Pemberton's 

 Course of Chemistry, delivered at Gresham College, 

 8vo. 1771, accordino: to Hutton and Watt. These 

 last-named authorities both attribute to Pember- 

 ton himself the dissertation on the fluxional con- 

 troversy in Robins's Tracts : but it certainly has 

 Wilson's name to it ; or rather, it is said to be by 

 the publisher (which we now call editor) of the 

 volumes. It is very likely that Pemberton gave 

 help : assuredly he must have been consulted by 

 his intimate friend on facts the truth of which was 

 within his own knowledge. Accordingly, the fol- 

 lowing assertions, made by Wilson, are not to be 

 lightly passed over : first (which also Robins 

 assumes again and again), that Newton wrote the 

 anonymous account of the Commercium Epistoli- 

 cum {Phil. Trans., No. 342.) usually attributed to 

 Keill, which, in Latin, forms the Preface to the 

 second edition of that work. Secondly, that 

 Newton wrote the criticism on John Bernoulli's 

 letter at the end of that second edition. Thirdly, 

 that Newton himself, and not Pemberton, omitted 

 tlie celebrated Scholium from the third edition of 

 the Principia. Montucla, in the second edition 

 (1802, vol. iii. p. 108.) of his History of Mathe- 

 matics, gives statements on these points from a 

 private source, to the effect that the notes of the 

 original edition of the Comm. Epist. were Newton's, 

 and that the informant had seen the matter which 

 was substituted for the Scholium, in Newton's 

 handwriting, among the proof-sheets preserved by 

 Pemberton. If Wilson were the informant, which 

 may have been, for Montucla's first edition was 

 published in 1758, Montucla must have con- 

 founded the two editions of the Comm. Epist. 

 If not, it must have been some one who did not 

 draw his account from the dissertation, in which 

 there is nothing about the proof-sheets. Montucla, 

 however, has lowered the credit of his informant 

 by making him assert that the second edition of the 

 Principia was managed by Cotes and Bentley, 

 without communication with Newton. This, 

 which all the world knows to be untrue of tlie 

 book, is true of the prefatory parts ; and Wilson 

 gives an account of Newton's dissatisfaction with 

 those parts. If Wilson were the informant, Mon- 

 tucla has again misunderstood him. 



A. De Moegan. 



oliver cromwell. the " whale " and the 



"storm" in 1658. 



(Vol. iii., p. 207.) 



B. B. may see, in the British Museum library, a 

 tract of four leaves only, the title of which I will 

 transcribe : 



*' London's Wonder. Being a most true and positive 

 relation of the taking and killing of a great Whale neer 



to Greenwich ; the said Whale being fifty-eight foot in 

 length, twelve foot high, fourteen foot broad, and two 

 foot between the eyes. At whose de ith was used 

 Harping-irons, Spits, Swords, Guns, Bills, Axes, and 

 Hatchets, and all kind of sharp Instruments to kill 

 her : and at last two Anchors being struck fast into her 

 body, she could not remoove them, but the blood gush'd 

 out of her body, as the water does out of a pump. The 

 report of which Whale hath caused many hundred of 

 people both by land and water to go and see her: the 

 said Whale being slaine hard by Greenwich upon the 

 third day of June this present yere 1658, which is 

 largely exprest in this following discourse. London, 

 printed for Francis Grove, neere the Sarazen's head on 

 SnowhiU, 1658." 



Surely, after reading the above, your sceptical 

 correspondent can no longer hesitate to accept as 

 a matter of veritable fact this story so very like a 

 whale. 



Evelyn, who lived near Greenwich, and was most 

 probably one of the wonder-struck spectators of 

 the huge monster of the deep which had been so 

 rash as to visit our shores, notes in his Diary under 

 the above-mentioned date — 



" A large whale was taken betwixt my land butting 

 on the Thames and Greenwich, which drew an infinite 

 concourse to see it by water, horse, coach, and on foote, 

 from London and all parts. It appear'd first below 

 Greenwich at low water, for at high water it would 

 have destroyed all y« boates ; but lying now in shallow 

 water encompass'd with boates, after a long conflict it 

 was kill'd with a harping yron, struck in y« head, out 

 of which spouted blood and water by two tunnells, and 

 after an horrid grone it ran quite on shore and died. 

 Its length was 58 foote, height 16 ; black skin'd like 

 coach leather, very small eyes, greate tail, onely 2 

 small finns, a picked snout, and a mouth so wide that 

 divers men might have stood upright in it: no teeth, 

 but suck'd the slime onely as thro' a grate of that bone 

 which we call whale-bone ; the throate yet so narrow 

 as would not have admitted the least of fishes. The 

 extreames of the cetaceous bones hang downewards 

 from the upper jaw, and was hairy towards the ends 

 and bottom within side : all of it prodigious, but in no- 

 thing more wonderfull then that an animal of so greate 

 a bulk should be nourished onely by slime thro' those 

 grates." 



Having disposed of this matter, I shall now turn 

 my attention to the great storm that immediately 

 preceded the death of that " arch rebell Oliver 

 Cromwell, cal'd Protector," which, be it remem- 

 bered, took place on Friday the 3rd of September, 

 1658. 



"^Toss'd in a furious hurricane. 

 Did Oliver give up his reign." 



So saith the witty author of Hudibras ; and to 

 these lines his editor, Grey, adds the note — 



" At Oliver's death was a most furious tempest, such 

 as had not been known in the memory of man, or 

 hardly ever recorded to have been in this nation. (See 

 Echard's History of England, vol. ii.) Though most 



