pr ate:| 
NEW PUBLICATIONS. 
Kong. Veteafkaps Academiens Nya Handlingar, 8c. New 
- Tr&nfaétions of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Stock- 
‘holm, for the Year 1797. Vol. XVII. Part Second, with 
two Plates. Part Third, with three Plates. 
=! 
a] FE fecond part of this work contains the following 
papers: I, Mclanderhjelm’s continuation of the Hiftory of 
Phyfical Aftronomy. The author here mentions the at- 
tempts of the Academy of Paris, in 1730, to revive the 
fyftem of Defcartes in oppofition to Newton’s fyftem of gra~ 
vitation, and particularly what John Bernouilli fays in his 
New Thoughts on the Syftem of Defcartes, and the manner 
of deducing from it the orbits and aphelia of the planets, 
together with the objeétions which he makes to Newtons 
D*Alembert fhewed, in his Treatife on the Equilibrium and 
Movement of Fluids, the faults committed by Bernouilli, 
and proved that, according to Bernouilli’s fyftem, all the parts 
of fach a yortex muft complete the revolution of their orbits 
at the fame time ; and that the planets, if they moved round 
the fun in fuch vortices, muft defcribe their orbits in the 
fame period; which, however, is contrary to nature: - As 
Bernouilli himfelf found that the velocity of fach: vortiecs 
did not agree with Kepler’s rules, founded on obfervation, 
he endeavoured to explain this difference, but fell into the 
fame errors as before. His new hypothefis alfo, for explain- 
ing the motion of the aphelia, was not agreeable to nattire 5 
and Bouguer as well as D’Alembert fhewed that the 
elliptic orbits of the planets could not agree with Defcartes’s 
fyftem of vortices, and that this fyftem could not ferve ta: 
explain their motion.—IT. Experiments with Pictra Fongaia 
(lapis fungifery, and Obfervations on its Nature, by F. At 
Gadd.—This {pecies of earth, found near Rome, Naples and 
Florence, was firft difeovered by Perber. Near Naples: it is 
found in the chalk-hills, like'a white MalaGtites intermixed 
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